Revealing General Patterns of Microbiomes That Transcend Systems: Potential and Challenges of Deep Transfer Learning

Abstract

A growing body of research has established that the microbiome can mediate the dynamics and functional capacities of diverse biological systems. Yet, we understand little about what governs the response of these microbial communities to host or environmental changes.

Deciphering the Microbiome: Integrating Theory, New Technologies, and Inclusive Science

“…When trying to understand general principles that can translate across many different microbiome systems and scales, system-specific features and the myriad of microbiome methodologies can represent barriers. David et al argue that deep transfer learning approaches can discover microbe-microbe and microbe-environment interactions that are generalizable across systems ( 18 ). Using approaches developed for natural language processing, these authors argue that deep transfer learning approaches can help discover a generalized lexicon of microbiomes that could be used across vastly divergent microbiome types and different scales of resolution.…”