Harnessing the positive health benefits of microbes

Experts build database of 'salutogenic potential’

Flinders University

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image: 

Dr Jake Robinson, from the College of Science and Engineering at Flinders University. 

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Credit: Flinders University

Viruses and bacteria get a bad rap around the world but now Flinders University experts are identifying the positive ‘upside’ of powerful benefits that microbes have on human health.    

Flinders microbial ecologist Dr Jake Robinson and colleagues have presented a timely reminder of these ‘invisible friends’ in a new article published in Microbial Biotechnology, underlining the benefits of moving away from a threat-centred view of microbes and biogenic compounds.

The article introduces the ‘Database of Salutogenic Potential’, a world-first prototype open-access repository that catalogues microbes and natural compounds linked to positive health outcomes.

“Emerging evidence shows that exposure to diverse environmental microbiomes and natural biochemical products also promotes health and resilience,” says Dr Robinson.

“Rather than viewing biodiversity as something to be eliminated, contemporary approaches recognise the vital role of diverse ecosystems in creating salutogenic, or health-promoting, environments.

“By consolidating this data, we aim to rebalance the story of microbes – highlighting not only what makes us sick, but also what keeps us well. After all, health is not merely the absence of disease.

“The implications are far-reaching – from designing healthier cities and schoolyards to guiding ecosystem restoration and rethinking green infrastructure.”

Salutogenic microbes – those that promote health – and beneficial biochemical compounds have received comparatively little attention despite their important roles in regulating immune function and metabolic processes, suppressing disease, mitigating stress and supporting ecosystem resilience.

“For well over a century, microbes and chemicals in the air have mainly been studied as threats – causes of infection, disease and contamination. While this pathogen-centric lens has saved countless lives, it also risks overlooking the invisible biodiversity that actively supports human and planetary health,” says Dr Robinson.

“Just as biodiversity loss threatens our health, restoring microbial and biochemical richness could be a key to healthier futures.”

The researchers have identified 124 potentially salutogenic microbial taxa and 14 biochemical compounds (from soil bacteria to plant-derived phytoncides) associated with benefits ranging from immune regulation to stress reduction.

“We aim to shift the balance between pathogen-centric and salutogenic perspectives, potentially enabling future applications in public health, urban planning and ecosystem restoration,” says Dr Robinson.

“While the current iteration of the database primarily centres on human health outcomes, it is designed to expand into ecosystem health domains, embedding salutogenic thinking into One Health frameworks.

“We’re not viewing this database as a finished tool. It’s a foundation – an invitation for scientists, practitioners and communities to co-create a fuller picture of how invisible biodiversity sustains our lives.

“However, even in its early form, this resource rebalances the traditional pathogen focus by consolidating data on salutogenic taxa, their benefits and environmental origins – and it will advance holistic approaches to environmental and human health.”

The new article, Mapping and cataloguing microbial and biochemical determinants of dealth: Towards a ‘Database of Salutogenic Potential’ (2025) by Jake M Robinson, Joel Brame, Christian Cando-Dumancela, Sonali Deshmukh, Nicole W Fickling, Scott Hawken, Claire Hayward, Emma Kuhn, Kevin Lee, Craig Liddicoat, Sunita Ramesh, Kate Robinson, Xin Sun and Martin F Breed has been published in Microbial Biotechnology (Wiley Online) DOI: 10.1111/1751-7915.70243. 

Dr Robinson also has recently joined researchers in China to reveal that urban soils harbour more pathogens than forest, with a several-fold increase in the pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae. The study in Communications Earth and Environment (Nature Springer) highlights the need to understand the risk to human health and soil biodiversity of bacterial zoonotic pathogens buildup in densely populated cities around the world.

Funding: This study was supported by the National Environmental Science Program (NESP), National Natural Science Foundation of China, New Zealand Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, International Partnership Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences and National Key Research and Development Program of China.

NB: Dr Jake Robinson’s third book, The Nature of Pandemics: Why Protecting Biodiversity is Key to Human Survival, has just been published. 

 

Caption

Flinders University researchers and collaborators prepared a novel global open-access database cataloguing health-promoting microbes and biogenic compounds. 

Credit

J Robinson (Flinders University)

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Journal

Microbial Biotechnology

DOI

10.1111/1751-7915.70243 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Cells

Article Title

Mapping and cataloguing microbial and biochemical determinants of dealth: Towards a ‘Database of Salutogenic Potential

Breakthrough AI from NYUAD speeds up discovery of life-supporting microbes

New tool identifies hidden algal proteins with near-perfect accuracy and accelerates biological research by 10,000×

New York University

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From freshwater ponds to clear coastal waters, single-celled algae play a vital role in sustaining life on Earth. Courtesy David R. Nelson, NYU Abu Dhabi.

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Credit: From freshwater ponds to clear coastal waters, single-celled algae play a vital role in sustaining life on Earth. Courtesy David R. Nelson, NYU Abu Dhabi.

Scientists at NYU Abu Dhabi have developed a powerful new artificial intelligence tool called LA⁴SR that can rapidly identify previously overlooked proteins in microalgae - tiny organisms that produce much of the Earth’s oxygen and support entire aquatic ecosystems.

This breakthrough will allow scientists to speed up the search for new natural compounds and enzymes that could support future clean energy solutions. It will also help researchers better understand how microscopic life adapts to changing environments and open new possibilities for monitoring water quality and tracking how ecosystems respond to climate shifts.

Microalgae are essential to life on the planet, yet many of their proteins are difficult to detect because they are mixed with proteins from other microorganisms. Traditional computer programs often miss large portions of these algal proteins or take weeks to analyze them.

To solve this challenge, the NYUAD team trained an AI system to read protein sequences the way a language model reads text. As a result, LA⁴SR can separate real algal proteins from background noise with near-perfect accuracy and it performs this analysis 10,000 times faster than existing methods.

“Microalgae are among the most important organisms on Earth, but much of their biology is still hidden from us,” said Associate Professor of Biology at NYU Abu Dhabi Kourosh Salehi-Ashtiani. “With LA⁴SR we can finally see these proteins clearly, we are making the invisible visible. By training AI to capture genomic information that standard tools miss, we’re accelerating marine biology for health and environmental innovation,” adds NYU Abu Dhabi Senior Research Scientist and the lead author of the study David Nesson.

LA⁴SR marks a significant step forward in revealing how the smallest organisms on Earth help sustain life on the planet.

Times Higher Education ranks NYU among the world’s top 31 universities, making NYU Abu Dhabi the highest globally ranked university in the UAE. Alumni achievements include 24 Rhodes Scholars, underscoring the caliber of talent nurtured at the University. On the faculty and research front, NYUAD now has four Nobel Laureates and established more than 90 faculty labs and projects, producing over 9,500 internationally recognized publications. According to the Nature Index, NYUAD ranks number one in the UAE for publications in the world’s top science journals.

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Journal

Patterns

DOI

10.5281/zenodo.13920000 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Pan-microalgal dark proteome mapping via interpretable deep learning and synthetic chimeras

Article Publication Date

9-Dec-2025

 

Exposing the most dangerous dams in the US

New research aims to create the first country-wide database of unsafe dams and the communities they threaten, using data from Sentinel-1 satellite.

American Geophysical Union

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NEW ORLEANS — Dams in the United States may be in worse condition than previously understood. More than 16,700 dams across the country are classified as high hazard potential as of 2024, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. Over 2,500 of these dams are in poor condition. But with newly utilized radar technology, scientists at Virginia Tech are revealing dams across the United States that may have crumbling infrastructure hidden from view of safety inspectors.  

While research into the use of radar technology to reveal damaged dams is preliminary, geoscientist Mohammad Khorrami at Virginia Tech and his team hope to combine the findings with other publicly available data to build a country-wide database of dams, their flood risks, and the communities who could be impacted by them.  

Khorrami will present the findings during an oral session on analytics and data for advancing sustainability at AGU’s 2025 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, on Thursday, 18 December. From 15 to 19 December, #AGU25 brings together more than 20,000 scientists to discuss the latest in Earth and space science research.  

Most current dams in the United States were built in a boom of construction during the 1950’s and 1960’s, making the average dam 61 years old, according to the National Inventory of Dams. As dams across the country begin crumbling, Khorrami knew he could help policymakers focus their limited funding. “It’s difficult to address all of these dams,” Khorrami said. “If you cannot financially take care of all of them at the same time, we can provide the priority dams.” 

While dams are generally monitored for damages and overall condition, tools to understand the stability of the structure underneath the dam are limited. So, the team at Virginia Tech conceived of a new way to monitor the structural integrity of large dams across the United States without going into the field. Utilizing Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar from the Sentinel-1 satellite, Khorrami looked at how sections of high-risk dams slowly sunk into the ground over a 10 year period.  

The team focused on hydroelectric dams that are 50 feet or taller, as these dams have the most potential impact if they were to fail – not only to the communities directly downstream but to the vast amounts of infrastructure they can power.  

What they found was shocking to them: Many dams that should have been stabilized were still sinking, potentially impacting the dam’s structure. “I want to emphasize that this is a preliminary result,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, geoscientist at Virginia Tech and co-author of the research. “We need to do further analysis to have a concrete answer. But some of the observations may suggest that some of these infrastructures are undergoing internal degradation.” 

At one dam in North Carolina, the team corroborated what other inspections already suggested—the dam was slowly sinking on its northern face, cracking the concrete of the structure and threatening the safety of the town of Roanoke Rapids below it.  

With their newfound ability to inspect dams remotely, Khorrami and his team combined the radar scans with structural data of the dams to understand the risk each dam posed. Overlaying these dams with U.S. Census data, FEMA’s National Risk Index, and FEMA’s flood inundation zones, they further discovered that many of the most damaged dams are poised to destroy many socially vulnerable communities in the country. These communities may have limited emergency preparedness, with a lack of Emergency Action Plans or resources in the event of a flood.  

While the United States has yet to see a massive dam breakage in the modern era, Khorrami’s team is hoping to prevent such a tragedy. If any one of these large hydropower dams were to fail, “It’s a disaster,” said Khorrami.  

And not just for the communities inundated with flooding, Shirzaei adds, “Some of the dams actually serve as a sub-buffer for water that’s used for agriculture and for electricity production. Those dams can create a ripple effect if they fail that can impact the national economy.”  

The aging infrastructure in the United States is compounding with a threat the engineers of the 1960’s could not have anticipated: climate change. Intensive rain events have begun pushing dams to the brink, forcing them to hold more and more water in much shorter periods of time.  

But communities still have a lot of power, Khorrami argues. Referencing a 2025 paper by Nasser et al., he noted that a substantial amount of dam failure is due to a lack of maintenance or poor management. Therefore, “almost 40-50% [of dam risk] is something that is in our hands.” 

“The next step is to create these dynamic risk models that can be updated on a regular basis using the data that we produce,” said Shirzaei. The team intends to build an interactive map with current and future data on US dams at risk, available to the public and policymakers alike.  

 

Contributed by Sierra Bouchér 

 

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Abstract information: 

IN42C-06 — Exposing the Nation’s Most Vulnerable Dams: A Remote Sensing and Socio-Spatial Risk Framework   

Wednesday, 17 December, 11:35 – 11:45 Central Time

Room 294 (NOLA Convention Center) 

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AGU’s Annual Meeting (#AGU25) will bring more than 20,000 Earth and space scientists to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, LA from 15-19 December. Members of the press and public information officers can request complimentary press registration for the meeting now through the end of the conference. Learn more about the press AGU25 experience in our online Press Center. 

AGU (www.agu.org) is a global community supporting more than half a million professionals and advocates in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, AGU aims to advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.