Short abstract:

Drawing from our practical experience in applied hologenomics and food fermentation, this paper explores what it means to sense and make sense of microbes when they are inherently part of our sensing apparatus as holobionts.

Long abstract:

Increasing access to molecular and genomic technologies have spurred interest in uncovering the entangled relationships between microbial life and all living entities. The holobiont perspective, in which living beings are reconceptualised as symbiotic assemblages of macrobial and microbial life, is reshaping fundamental scientific concepts of the constitutional unit of organisms. This relational and contextual perspective offers an opportunity to re-examine not only biological boundaries, but also broader disciplinary and methodological ones that shape knowledge production.

Through engaging with knowing as a form of sensing, we are interested in ways that we, as holobionts, make sense of and with microbes. Drawing from our practical experience in microbial ecology, applied hologenomics, food science and food fermentation, we will reflect on the limitations encountered through different scientific approaches to ‘sensing’ microbes, illustrated by the study of fermented food ecologies. Marginal but growing research across the natural and social sciences is also demonstrating how the sensing ‘subject’ and the sensed ‘object’ are often materially co-constituted, especially in the context of food, eating, and tasting. Bringing the holobiont perspective to bear on these two epistemological observations, we will explore what it means to sense and make sense of microbes when they are inherently part of our sensing apparatus.