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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.

MIT’s Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics recently featured Dr. Sean Gibbons in an alumni profile. Gibbons discussed his academic arc that started in Montana and led to his master’s studies (sponsored by a Fulbright Graduate Fellowship) at Uppsala University in Sweden, completing his PhD in biophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, and conducting his postdoc work in the lab of Eric Alm.

In ISB’s first-ever Research Roundtable event, Assistant Professor Dr. Sean Gibbons delivered a presentation titled “Gut-Check: Personalized Nutrition and Your Microbiome.” His talk covered a lot of ground, including recently published research showing how the health of our microbiomes can predict longevity, and how we can build and maintain a healthy gut microbiome.