THE HUMAN MICROBIOME
The Trillions of You
HUMAN MICROBIOME PROJECT
Launched in 2008, the NIH Common Fund Human Microbiome Project was a fund/organization established with the goal of identifying and characterizing the human microbiota, and generating research resources about their role in human health and disease.
If you would like to discover more information about this project, click the button below to view their website.
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The Invisible You-The Human Microbiome exhibition is a public expo that includes a wide variety of collaborations done by artists and scientists to create an amazing collection of artwork and interactive pieces ranging from sculptures, to textiles that highlight patterns of bacteria. [1]
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Rebecca D. Harris
Human Textile
Rebecca Harris' work focuses on the human's perception on how medical and social changes affect the human body. This focused piece was commissioned by the Eden Project and Wellcome Trust, in which Harris collaborated with Professor Mike Wilson, a microbiologist at the University College London.
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Within the exhibit, Harris created a textile embroidery of the human body during pregnancy. The multicolored dots represent different parts of the human microbiome. [1]
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Joana Ricou
Bellybutton Portraits
For the Invisible You- The Human Microbiome Exhibit, Joana Ricou created portraits using bacteria from visitors' bellybuttons during the Strange Science event in 2015.
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Her work was completed in collaboration with Dr. Rob Dunn and Holly Menninger of North Carolina State University and Dr. Julie Urban of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and with Dr. William Gaze at Exeter University. [3]
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Mellisa Fisher
Bacteria Face
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Mellisa Fisher has explored naturally occurring fractals through studies in collaboration with Dr. Mark Clements and Dr. Richard Harvey.
Stemming from her interest in both art and microbiology, Fisher created a piece showing the human face made from growing microorganisms. [3]
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Invisible You – The Human Microbiome Exhibition
Led by Gregory Buck at Virginia Commonwealth University, they (Gregory Buck, Jerry Strauss, and Kimberly Ferguson) conducted a study of the vaginal and racially diverse cohort of pregnant adult and adolescent women with normal or preterm births.
"Buck and colleagues plan to collect and analyze microbiome taxonomic, metagenomic, and metatranscriptomic data, and to study, in parallel, host immunoproteomic and lipidomic data from vaginal, rectal, buccal, and skin samples from this cohorts."
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This study will allow the community to examine properties of the microbiome and lead to new insights into the roles of vaginal microbiota in preterm birth and other adverse outcomes of pregnancy. By having an understanding of the roles these organisms play in the health of the female urogenital tract will lead to better prenatal and postnatal care, likely leading to diminished levels of preterm birth and infant morbidity and mortality. [4]
Virginia Commonwealth University
Gregory Buck, Jerry Strauss, and Kimberly Ferguson
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Ramnik Xavier from Massachusetts General Hospital, Broad Institute and Curtis Huttenhower from Harvard School of Public Health, Broad Institute, conducted a closely-spaced longitudinal study of the gut microbiomes of three different cohorts (90 subjects total, including both children and adults) of healthy and Inflammatory bowel diseased patients.
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Their study specifically targeted inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including both Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, which affects about 1.5 million Americans. 25% of cases occur in children, and overall incidence has increased 400% in the past 50 years. IBD was shown to be one of the most important human conditions linked to the gut microbiota.
With their goal of discovering more information about the complex mixture of bacterial, viral, archaeal, and fungal organisms of the gut, they collected data to form an integrated dataset to provide a resource enabling the gut microbial ecosystem as a target for diagnosis, therapy, and mechanistic understanding of IBD. [4]
Massachusetts General Hospital, Broad Institute and Harvard School of Public Health, Broad Institute
Ramnik Xavier and Curtis Huttenhower
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Michael Snyder (Stanford University) and George Weinstock (Washington University)
Snyder and Weinstock formed a multiomics Center for the detailed analysis of both the microbiome, its activity, and its interconnected relationship with the host during healthy and disease states by omics profiling.
They conducted a closely-spaced study of the microbiomes of a small cohort (~40-50 subjects) of prediabetic subjects with the goal of evaluating immunological triggers for diabetes. The new sequencing technology, known as TruSeq synthetic long read sequencing technology, was used to dive deeper into the human gut microbiome.
Overall, more than 1000 different physiological states will be analyzed in omic detail and the microbiome and corresponding host information will serve as a resource to the scientific community. These multiple data types will form the integrated dataset for the Snyder/Weinstock project and will be made publically available. [4]
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Frederic Bushman
University of Pennsylvania
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Bushman and colleges at the University of Pennsylvania sought to systematically separate the effects of the standard care for the treatment of Crohn's disease (a subtype of inflammatory bowel disease) on the gut microbiota. One major characteristic of Crohn's disease is an imbalance in the normal composition of the microbiota in comparison to healthy controls.
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They found that in particular, "antibiotic use seemed to worsen dysbiosis by reducing the abundances of some microbes, increasing the abundances of fungi or both, thus aggravating the condition. Anti-inflammatories, on the other hand, reduced gut microbiota dysbiosis, thereby potentially supporting recovery from CD".
This study suggests that analysis of the microbiome may lead to useful biomarkers for determining the efficacy of standard treatment for Crohn's disease and for providing additional tests for early detection. [9]
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According to his website, Dr. Jonathan A. Eisen is a Professor at the University of California, Davis with appointments in the Genome Center, the Dept. of Evolution and Ecology and the Dept. of Medical Microbiology and Immunology.
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contributed to many past projects, and continues to participate in current projects. He has spoken at a Ted Talks and recieved the Benjamin Franklin Award (Bioinformatics) in 2011.
His research includes: (directly from site) [10]
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The genomic basis for the origin and evolution of new functions.
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The ecology and evolution of microbial communities.
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The co-evolution of microbes and their carrying vessels (i.e., hosts).
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Variation in “evolvability.”
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The development of phylogeny-driven computational tools to analyze genomic and metagenomic sequence data.
Prior to moving to UC Davis, he was on the faculty of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and held an Adjunct appointment at the Johns Hopkins University. He earned his PhD in Biological Sciences from Stanford University, and his AB in Biology from Harvard College.Eisen has
