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Dr. Sean Gibbons, assistant professor at the Institute for Systems Biology and a Washington Research Foundation Distinguished Investigator, discusses with Nature Computational Science how he uses computational science to gain insights into the gut microbiome and to address the major challenges of this field, as well as his advice to young LGBTQIA+ scientists.

New ISB research shows that different patient responses to statins can be explained by the variation in the human microbiome. The findings were published in the journal Med, and suggest that microbiome monitoring could be used to help optimize personalized statin treatments.

Dr. Annie Levine joins the lab as a clinical fellow. Annie is a fellow in pediatric gastroenterology at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She graduated from Harvard with a BA in Slavic Languages and Literatures and earned her MD at the University of Pittsburgh in 2017.

In the final ISB-Town Hall Seattle Science Series of 2021, ISB Assistant Professor Dr. Sean Gibbons sat down with UCSD Professor Dr. Jack Gilbert, and the two microbiome experts discussed past research, exciting science happening today, promising products and therapies on the horizon, and much more. 

The 2021 ISB Virtual Microbiome Series highlighted recent advances toward understanding general patterns of commensal population genomic variation within the human gut, how fine-scale commensal genomic variation is influenced by host phenotypic variation, and whether or not commensal genomic variation has an impact on human health and disease.

The strongest associations with weight loss success or failure – independent of BMI – are found in the genetic capacity of the gut microbiome. These new findings open the door to diagnostic tests that can identify people likely to lose weight with healthy lifestyle changes and those who might need more drastic interventions.