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There is a dichotomy between Bacteroides- and Prevotella-dominated guts -- two common gut bacterial genera -- and there is a significant barrier when it comes to transitioning from one to the other.
A promising new open-source metabolic modeling tool provides microbiome researchers a path forward in predicting ecosystem function from community structure. News of the software package, called MICOM, was developed in part by researchers in ISB's Gibbons Lab, and its uses were published in the journal mSystems.
Predicting the alpha diversity of an individual's gut microbiome is possible by examining metabolites in the blood. The robust relationship between host metabolome and gut microbiome diversity opens the door for a fast, cheap and reliable blood test to identify individuals with low gut diversity.
The human microbiome is a relatively new area of research, and there are numerous questions surrounding it. What is the human microbiome? Can we change it? Does it make us sick? Keep us well? ISB Assistant Professor and microbiome researcher Dr. Sean Gibbons answers these questions -- and many more.
Dr. Sushmita Patwardhan joins the Gibbons Lab as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Systems Biology. Dr. Patwardhan recently completed her PhD in marine microbial ecology at Rutgers University, supervised by Prof. Costantino Vetriani.
Alex Carr will join the Institute for Systems Biology for his PhD work, co-advised by Nitin Baliga and Sean Gibbons. Alex is a graduate student in the Molecular Engineering Program at the University of Washington.