The 5th Annual MetaSUB Conference convened on August 29th – 131th in Istanbul, Turkey. It was a combination of established and emerging scientists from several fields including genomics, bioinformatics, microbiology, engineering, and medicine, to share results of their work in the field of microbiome and metagenomics studies. A goal for this meeting was to expand the consortium and allow members to attend worldwide. Our gracious host for this year was Dr. Uğur Sezerman from Acibadem University.