Research team designs novel Microbiome Search Engine 2 When it comes to large-scale mining of microbiome data sets, the process can be complicated, tedious, and downright overwhelming. Given the large volume of data, it is difficult to relate a new microbiome sample to the huge number of existing microbiome samples. To help streamline the process of correlating newly developed microbiomes with existing data sets, a research team has introduced Microbiome Search Engine 2 (MSE 2), a microbiome database platform for searching query microbiomes against the existing microbiome data sets on the basis of their similarity in taxonomic structure or functional profile. The authors note key improvements such as database extension, data compatibility, a search engine kernel, and a user interface.