On Oct. 5, 2018, the rationale around the Microbiome Vault initiative was published in Science. The initiative was inspired by the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and aims to create a global repository for microbial samples, acting as a “Noah’s Ark for microbes”. 

The Microbiota Vault initiative was formally founded in June 2019 as a non-profit organization with the goal of preserving the diversity of human-associated microbiota.

The initiative is a microbial biobank, collecting and storing a diverse collection of gut bacteria from various human populations. This is crucial because the human microbiome is increasingly recognized as a vital component of human health, and its diversity is thought to be declining in many populations