Roman Avdeev

The microbiome is the sum of microbes, including bacteria, archaea, viruses, microbial eukaryotes and fungi, and their genomic elements and interactions in their niches. Distinct microbiomes can be found on and in the body of an organism or in the environment. The NIH Common Fund Human Microbiome Project (HMP) is generating resources to facilitate characterization of the human microbiota for further understanding of how the microbiome impacts human health and disease. The Earth Microbiome Project aims to characterize all microbial life on earth and understand microbial ecology in different biomes and habitats.

APIs are used for communication between services, such as embedding a popular function like Google Maps into a website or app using the Google Maps API to embed the map. This means if the Google Maps API did not exist, any website or application that wanted to have an interactive map would have to take the time to develop their own interactive map. Whereas the Google Map API allows sites and apps to have access to a consistent map experience.

Application programming interface (API) is a set of codes, protocols, and tools for querying data, parsing responses, and sending instructions between one software platform and another. It allows communication between software programs. APIs have often been described as any sort of generic connectivity interface to an application; however, APIs have taken on some characteristics that make them useful and valuable: