Leveraging Microbes to Address Humanity’s Biggest Problems
At ASM Microbe 2024, ASM CEO Stefano Bertuzzi, Ph.D., MPH, sat down with ASM Past President Virginia Miller, Ph.D., and Rino Rappuoli, Ph.D., to discuss how ASM is positioning itself to help solve big problems with microbes.
Video Highlights
What can help combat climate change, mitigate biodiversity loss and improve human health?
Microbes.
These tiny organisms have immense potential when it comes to addressing issues plaguing society. As ASM embarks on its new strategic roadmap—transitioning toward a generative, globally focused organization that leverages microbial sciences to improve the sustainability of our planet—and builds connections among diverse entities, disciplines and sectors, the Society is helping to take microbes out of the realm of potential and into one of actionable solutions.
Bolstering the Academy's Work on Climate Change
“A couple of [ASM’s] big goals in terms of the new strategic plan [are] to really connect with all the stakeholders in microbiology globally, to use science in the service of humanity and to try to tackle some of the big problems that we are having in the world. Climate change is a big part of that,” said ASM Past President Virginia Miller, Ph.D.She pointed to work by the American Academy of °®¶¹´«Ã½—the honorific leadership group within ASM—as providing a critical foundation for understanding microbes as both drivers and mitigators of climate change.
In 2021, the Academy announced a 5-year plan to build a Scientific Portfolio focused solely on the topic of climate change. Under the guidance of Jay Lennon, Ph.D., Chair of the Academy’s climate change taskforce, and Academy Director Nguyen Nguyen, Ph.D., the group has done “amazing work,” Miller said. “They've held a number of colloquia [and] published papers that are results of those colloquia. They had a whole track session here at Microbe last year, [as well as] this year to really highlight some of the ideas to have come out of those meetings. And they're still working on a lot of other things.”
Notably, the Academy’s approach mirrors what ASM aims to become on a broad scale. “The work that the Academy has done with their task force on climate change and all the output that has come from that is a real example of how we feel like our new scientific units will be most effective going forward,” Miller said. The units—ASM Health, ASM Applied and Environmental °®¶¹´«Ã½ and ASM Mechanism Discovery—will collaboratively identify key issues on a global scale, discern where the science is headed and how microbiology fits into the equation to, ultimately, facilitate action.
Fostering Partnerships to Advance Actionable Science
While ASM’s strategic roadmap focuses on empowering microbiologists to tackle issues like climate change, doing so is a monumental task. “There's no way that ASM can do this and take on this thing alone,” said ASM CEO Stefano Bertuzzi, Ph.D., MPH. That is why the Society is forming alliances with other organizations and stakeholders to broaden its reach and capabilities.To that end, ASM recently partnered with the , an organization that connects microbiological societies from around the world by, among other efforts, holding meetings every 2-3 years. But, as IUMS President , noted, “I got a sense that we got to a point in microbiology where we need to change pace, and just organizing a meeting may not be enough.”
“It’s clear that today people would like not only to publish something, but to [also] be useful for society, for the world—basically, to do something that's going to have an impact on life,” he continued. “I started to see what ASM was doing, and I thought that getting together will be more effective in doing the things that both of us wanted to do.”
As part of this partnership, ASM and IUMS set up a joint scientific advisory group comprised of 12 experts hailing from different disciplines and geographic regions. The group’s goal is to devise scalable, microbe-oriented solutions to protect and advance human and environmental health. They have identified 3 key areas of focus: the role of microbes in generating and mitigating greenhouse gases, the power of microbes as therapeutics and the ability to use microbes to repair environmental damage/biodiversity loss (e.g., boosting nitrogen fixation in the soil, combating coral bleaching).
“The idea is basically to convince policymakers that microbes can really help to solve a lot of the problems of today,” not just in the long-term Rappuoli said.
“One of the core values that we talk about in our organization is that of science in service,” Bertuzzi added. “So, we need to understand what the problem is to understand what the possible solutions are, and that's what this group that we put together between ASM and IUMS is trying to address from a scientific perspective.”
Bringing All Stakeholders into the Fold
Microbiologists produce an extensive body of research that demonstrates how microbes can advance society. But, without the people who can make solutions happen (e.g., policymakers), the work, whether it relates to climate change, pandemic preparedness or another issue, hits a dead end. “[Scientists] can make an incredible contribution, but [we] don’t get to determine what policies are,” Bertuzzi said.
Rappuoli emphasized that, whatever the issue is, there is 1 thing that always comes into play: money. No matter how vocal scientists are, a lack of a viable economic framework is a roadblock for tangible outcomes. “That’s why we put an economist on the [ASM-IUMS] scientific advisory group, because he has to listen to all of us and translate that into something that's going to be understood to people that don't speak our language, but the ones that make the decisions,” he said.
ASM’s strategic roadmap recognizes the necessity of bringing stakeholders that span scientific disciplines and societal sectors into the fold. “As scientists, what we do is the first part, and we need to stick to that, but it's the role of associations like IUMS and whoever else [ASM is] going to partner with to really create that infrastructure that brings together the other components and other stakeholders. Because it's not just the scientists that can take it from soup-to-nuts, so to speak,” Bertuzzi stated.
Improving Science Communication
With that in mind, underlying all of ASM’s current and future work is the need for better science communication. When it comes to humanity’s biggest problems, microbes have been largely absent from the conversation. Rappuoli thinks this lack of awareness is, in part, because microbiologists have been too quiet about what they bring to the table.
“We need to start to raise our voices,” he stated. “We need to translate basically our words, our problems, [into] a language that people outside are going to listen [to] and they can understand, and that language is completely different than the one we use among us…We need to be open beyond what we do and basically learn how to communicate.”
For Miller, this means reshaping how scientists engage with their communities. If thinking about vaccine education and uptake, for example, it’s best “not to stand up and lecture to [people] ‘This is how this vaccine works, this is why you have to use it.’” Instead, she opts for starting from a point of interest and initiating a dialogue with community members about what is important, what they think about in trying to evaluate what is good for them, their families and their communities. “It’s a different level of communication,” she said, highlighting that scientists need to operate at all levels of communication, big and small.
“It’s hard sometimes because, as scientists, we talk to the brain; but, when we talk to people, we need to get to the brain through the heart,” Bertuzzi said. However, this challenge also offers an opportunity to transform the ways scientists make and maintain relationships. “I think it would be effective if we can create a culture in the scientific community—and we should try with ASM and microbiology—where [scientists]…do the real hard science in a very responsible way, but always keep in mind that, when we talk to the people, we should say ‘We work for you,’ he said. “That it's not that we separate ourselves as teachers [but] say ‘I work for you. Science is here to help, and we're doing this together.’”
