Parasite microbiome project: Grand challenges

The first Parasite Microbiome Project (PMP) Workshop (January 9-14, 2019, Clearwater, Florida, United States) hosted researchers from across continents and disciplines to lay the foundation of the PMP consortium.The PMP vision is to catalyze scientific discourse and explorations through a systems approach, toward an integrated understanding of the microbiota of parasites and their impact on health and disease.The participants identified knowledge gaps and grand challenges in the field of host-parasite-microbe interactions summarized here.The PMP will provide an interactive centralized platform and resource for transdisciplinary collaboration to propel the field of parasitology forward by disentangling complex interactions between parasites and hosts, their respective microbiota, and microbial communities in the parasite's direct environment (Fig 1).Parasitism is a successful lifestyle that has evolved in virtually every clade of multicellular organisms [1-3] and protists [4,5].Parasitology seeks to develop the means to prevent, limit, or cure infections by parasites for the benefit of humans, agriculture, and wildlife and to understand how parasitism and parasitic disease impact not only the host but also host communities and ecosystem health.This is a challenging task, considering the diversity and complex nature of host-parasite interactions.Parasitic organisms harbor a rich tapestry of traits associated with survival and must navigate the host immune response to reproduce and be effectively transmitted to the next host.