WASHINGTON — We share our bodies and surroundings with teeming communities of microbes that are crucial to the health of people and the planet, and now the Obama administration is beginning a major project to better understand those invisible ecosystems – and even control them.

The National Microbiome Initiative announced Friday at the White House aims to bring together scientists who study the microbes that live in the human gut and in the oceans, in farm soil and inside buildings, to speed discoveries that could bring big payoffs.

Consider: Taking antibiotics alters the diversity of your gut bacteria, which eventually settle into a new normal. The 2010 oil spill altered microbes in the Gulf of Mexico, which likewise settled into a new normal, said Dr. Jo Handelsman, associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Despite the parallels, “we have no idea if that’s a healthier norm or a less healthy norm than before, and no idea how to fix it,” said Handelsman, who led development of the initiative.

Leading researchers have long urged a national collaboration as the best way to learn how microbes interact with each other and their environments.

High on the wish list from scientists at Friday’s White House meeting: Hand-held sensors for real-time detection of microbes in air, soil, water or people.

The initiative will “give us a warp drive for microbiome research,” Dr. Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia, whose own studies have uncovered how dramatically microbes fluctuate after oil spills, told the meeting.

And in partnership with the government, dozens of universities, foundations and other organizations have pledged to invest more than $400 million in additional microbiome research investments, Handelsman said.

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