Microbial interactions include communication mediated by small molecules. A classic example is production of quorum sensing molecules, but the majority of clinically used antibiotics are also microbial in origin. The human microbiome has the capacity to produce an arsenal of bioactive small molecules, the vast majority of which are uncharacterized. We hypothesize that commensal microbes have encoded in their genomes, the ability to produce functionally important molecules that contributing to the stability of the host-microbiome symbiosis. This uses an un-biased, metagenomic-guided strategy to identify microbial derived skin-specific metabolites.