"Redefining Biology: The Holobiont Paradigm Shift"

The concept of holobionts, which refers to the idea that plants and animals are parts of a united meta-organism whose components evolve in concert with each other, represents a paradigm shift in biology. Biologists are using metagenomics to analyze the genomes of everything in a sample, and they are finding that almost every multicellular organism and even some single-celled ones have symbionts. The idea of holobionts is catching on, and it is acting as a reminder to biologists never to neglect a possible role for the microbiome in any phenomenon they are trying to understand.