Rohwer’s work with corals hints at a different type of microbial disease, one without a single obvious culprit.4 These illnesses are caused by communities of microbes, which have shifted into configurations that harm their hosts. None is a pathogen in its own right; instead, the entire community has shifted to a pathogenic state. There’s a word for such a state: dysbiosis.5 It is a term that evokes imbalance and discord in place of harmony and cooperation. It is the dark reflection of symbiosis, the antithesis of all the themes we have seen so far.
dysbiosis
