Figure 2.

Sitting at the interface between environment and host, the microbiome may interact with contaminants. Sequestration, inactivation, and degradation mitigate potential effects on host health, while activation or potentialization reinforce the effect of contaminants. Microbiome composition, abundance and functions respond to exposure, and dysbiosis can occur. Post-exposure recovery leads to a new stable state, identical, or altered compared to the pre-exposure state. Future lines of research are emphasized. Although contaminants may alter the host health through adverse outcome pathways, dysbiosis itself may also induce pathology and fitness loss, difficult to disentangle from each other.