At a rapid pace, biologists are learning the many ways in which resident microbes influence, and sometimes even control, their hosts to shape both health and disease. Understanding the biochemistry behind these interactions promises to reveal completely novel and targeted ways of counteracting disease processes. However, in our protocols and publications, we continue to describe these new results using a language that originated in a completely different context. This language developed when microbial interactions with hosts were perceived to be primarily pathogenic, as threats that had to be vanquished. Biomedicine had one dominating thought: winning this war against microorganisms. Today, we know that beyond their defensive roles, host tissues, especially epithelia, are vital to ensuring association with the normal microbiota, the communities of microbes that persistently live with the host. Thus, we need to adopt a language that better encompasses the newly appreciated importance of host-microbiota associations. We also need a language that frames the onset and progression of pathogenic conditions within the context of the normal microbiota. Such a reimagined lexicon should make it clear, from the very nature of its words, that microorganisms are primarily vital to our health, and only more rarely the cause of disease.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Sculpting the microbiome: how host factors determine and respond to microbial colonization’.

生物学家正在快速了解常驻微生物影响甚至有时控制宿主以塑造健康和疾病的多种方式。了解这些相互作用背后的生物化学有望揭示对抗疾病过程的全新且有针对性的方法。然而，在我们的协议和出版物中，我们继续使用源自完全不同背景的语言来描述这些新结果。当微生物与宿主的相互作用被认为主要是致病性的，作为必须被消灭的威胁时，这种语言就发展起来了。生物医学有一个主导思想：赢得这场与微生物的战争。今天，我们知道，除了防御作用之外，宿主组织，尤其是上皮细胞，对于确保与正常微生物群（持续与宿主共存的微生物群落）的联系至关重要。因此，我们需要采用一种语言来更好地体现新近认识到的宿主-微生物群关联的重要性。我们还需要一种语言来描述正常微生物群背景下致病性疾病的发生和进展。这样一个重新设计的词典应该从其词语的本质上清楚地表明微生物对我们的健康至关重要，而且很少是疾病的原因。

本文是“塑造微生物组：宿主因素如何决定和响应微生物定植”主题的一部分。