It was great to meet Bas Dutilh at Utrecht University who is doing some very cool experimental and computational work with microbial communities. Check out this paper for more info https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-018-0124-8. Admittedly, this work is only really feasible with the wealth of knowledge currently available for human microbiomes, but it provides ideas for ways forward with lesser known and understood microbial consortia.
