
Abstract: Since the advent of high-throughput sequencing, microbiology has seen a boom in data generated. A significant promise in the field was that more data would help us uncover mechanisms and eventually predict and control the function of microorganisms in pure culture or complex communities. Over 20 years later, we are still far from fulfilling that promise. In my talk, I will address the state-of-the-art multi-domain exploration of microbial communities and indicate logical steps to interconnect multi-omics and multi-domain to predict functional capacity in microbial communities. In this discussion, I will cover opposite approaches. A top-down approach using the CLUE-TERRA data where a large consortium explores the boundaries of meta-analyses. A bottom-up approach using NFDI4Microbiota use cases to indicate how hypotheses-driven approaches compare to data-driven ones.