Glossary

• Bespoke: made for a particular customer or user 

• Bovine: relating to or affecting cattle

• Cell-cultured Milk: attempting to grow and ferment microbial products in labs 

• Effervescence: bubbles in a liquid; fizz

• Fermentation: the chemical breakdown of a substance by bacteria, yeasts, or other microorganisms, typically involving effervescence and the giving off of heat

• Heuristic: enabling someone to discover or learn something for themselves 

• Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs): sugars found only in human breast milk that feed crucial gut bacteria

• Microbial dysbiosis: when microbial species are outta wack due to a reduction of specific microbial variety within a specific microbiome 

• Microbiome: the collection of all microbes, such as viruses, bacteria, and their genes, that naturally live on and in our bodies

• Microbiopolitics: coined by Heather Paxson; looking at microorganisms to see how they interact with each other, to compare how humans interact with each other 

• Microbiota: the microorganisms of a particular site

• Obdurate: stubbornly refusing to change one’s opinion or course of action

• Ontology: the metaphysics of the nature of being 

• Partibility: the quality or state of being partible; divisibility; separability

• Pedagogy: the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept 

• Precision Fermentation: methodology used to make artificial milk; isolate & extract microbes to ferment and produce cells or proteins identical to those made naturally (i.e., breast milk, cow’s milk)

• Synthesis: the combination of ideas to form a theory or system 

• Venture-based capital: startups & businesses with the potential for rapid growth

Did we miss anything? Contact Us if there is any key terms you feel should be added to this list!