She warned that the declining state of microbial diversity, while not as widely known as climate change, is just as much of a crisis. In just two years, what began as a dystopic fear has morphed into a concrete proposal.ĭr Dominguez-Bello and her fellow researchers plan to solicit donors, sponsors and partners. Neutrality is critical, said Dr Dominguez-Bello, because all countries must be willing to contribute to the collection in order to make it as diverse, and thus as comprehensive, as possible. The facility should be located in a politically neutral country with sufficient resources to guarantee the safety of the collection, according to the proposal. Once fully launched, the vault would need continuous funding to sustain itself. It is home to the world's largest collection of crop diversity.ĭr Dominguez-Bello estimates that the microbial vault will require about US$3 million (US$4.1 million) in its first year to hire workers who will then collect and store microbes in a repository equipped with liquid nitrogen tanks. The idea for such a vault was inspired by other 'bio-banks', most famously the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure facility on a Norwegian island above the Arctic Circle.

'The United Nations could ask the depositors to retrieve certain microbiota in the case of emergency.'

'In the case of war or an epidemic, this collection could potentially be used for humanitarian reasons,' Dr Dominguez-Bello said. Scientists and doctors may one day be able to prevent certain diseases by reintroducing lost microbiota to at-risk populations, the researchers said. The microbial vault would act as a hard drive of sorts, in which researchers could store back-ups of vanishing microbiota.

Scientists another doomsday vault