{
  "id": 8038410,
  "title": "The core microbiome as a reproducible, data-driven abstraction, not a biological entity",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/17/the-core-microbiome-as-a-reproducible-data-driven-abstraction-not-a",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-17T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.15.751703v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": null,
  "summary": "Microbial communities are highly diverse, making it difficult to distinguish stable ecological patterns from stochastic variation. The core microbiome offers a widely used framework for simplification, but prevalence-based definitions are often criticized for relying on arbitrary thresholds. We propose an alternative view in which the core microbiome is not a biologically complete or functionally…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}