Related Research Articles
The human microbiome is the aggregate of all microbiota that reside on or within human tissues and biofluids along with the corresponding anatomical sites in which they reside, including the gastrointestinal tract, skin, mammary glands, seminal fluid, uterus, ovarian follicles, lung, saliva, oral mucosa, conjunctiva, and the biliary tract. Types of human microbiota include bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists, and viruses. Though micro-animals can also live on the human body, they are typically excluded from this definition. In the context of genomics, the term human microbiome is sometimes used to refer to the collective genomes of resident microorganisms; however, the term human metagenome has the same meaning.
In medicine, the hygiene hypothesis states that early childhood exposure to particular microorganisms protects against allergies by properly tuning the immune system. In particular, a lack of such exposure is thought to lead to poor immune tolerance. The time period for exposure begins before birth and ends at school age.
Gut microbiota, gut microbiome, or gut flora are the microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses, that live in the digestive tracts of animals. The gastrointestinal metagenome is the aggregate of all the genomes of the gut microbiota. The gut is the main location of the human microbiome. The gut microbiota has broad impacts, including effects on colonization, resistance to pathogens, maintaining the intestinal epithelium, metabolizing dietary and pharmaceutical compounds, controlling immune function, and even behavior through the gut–brain axis.
Martin J. Blaser is an American physician who is the director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers (NJ) Biomedical and Health Sciences and the Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome and Professor of Medicine and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.
Fiona Brinkman is a Professor in Bioinformatics and Genomics in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, and is a leader in the area of microbial bioinformatics. She is interested in developing "more sustainable, holistic approaches for infectious disease control and conservation of microbiomes".
Dysbiosis is characterized by a disruption to the microbiome resulting in an imbalance in the microbiota, changes in their functional composition and metabolic activities, or a shift in their local distribution. For example, a part of the human microbiota such as the skin flora, gut flora, or vaginal flora, can become deranged (unbalanced), when normally dominating species become underrepresented and species that normally are outcompeted or contained increase to fill the void. Similar to the human gut microbiome, diverse microbes colonize the plant rhizosphere, and dysbiosis in the rhizosphere, can negatively impact plant health. Dysbiosis is most commonly reported as a condition in the gastrointestinal tract or plant rhizosphere.
Jeffrey Ivan Gordon is a biologist and the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor and Director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. He is internationally known for his research on gastrointestinal development and how gut microbial communities affect normal intestinal function, shape various aspects of human physiology including our nutritional status, and affect predisposition to diseases. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, and the American Philosophical Society.
Microbiota are the range of microorganisms that may be commensal, mutualistic, or pathogenic found in and on all multicellular organisms, including plants. Microbiota include bacteria, archaea, protists, fungi, and viruses, and have been found to be crucial for immunologic, hormonal, and metabolic homeostasis of their host.
Oral ecology is the microbial ecology of the microorganisms found in mouths. Oral ecology, like all forms of ecology, involves the study of the living things found in oral cavities as well as their interactions with each other and with their environment. Oral ecology is frequently investigated from the perspective of oral disease prevention, often focusing on conditions such as dental caries, candidiasis ("thrush"), gingivitis, periodontal disease, and others. However, many of the interactions between the microbiota and oral environment protect from disease and support a healthy oral cavity. Interactions between microbes and their environment can result in the stabilization or destabilization of the oral microbiome, with destabilization believed to result in disease states. Destabilization of the microbiome can be influenced by several factors, including diet changes, drugs or immune system disorders.
Lynn Bry is a physician, anaerobic microbiologist, and microbial geneticist at Brigham & Women's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. She has created multiple multi-institutional platforms to support scientific, clinical and educational activities, including the MadSci Network, Crimson prospective collection resource, Massachusetts Host-Microbiome Center, and Partners Healthcare-wide Pathogen Genomic Surveillance Program. She has also founded or co-founded successful start-up companies including iSpecimen and ConsortiaTX. She was awarded her MD and a PhD in Molecular Microbiology and Pathogenesis from Washington University School of Medicine. Her research studies host-microbiome interactions and their application to develop new therapeutics for human disease. She has authored or co-authored >70 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, including original papers in Science detailing a molecular model of host-microbial cross-talk in the small intestine, and in Nature Medicine demonstrate therapeutic use of defined commensal microbes to reverse food allergies. Bry teaches medical school courses and is also a lecturer and mentor for the Project Success Program at Harvard Medical School.
Karen Nelson is a Jamaican-born American microbiologist who was formerly president of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). On July 6, 2021 she joined Thermo Fisher Scientific as Chief Scientific Officer.
Julie Angela Segre is the Chief and Senior Investigator of the Translational and Functional Genomics Branch in the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Sarkis Mazmanian is an American medical microbiologist who has served as a professor at the California Institute of Technology since 2006. He is currently the Luis & Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, and a board member of Seed. Prior to this, Mazmanian was affiliated with Harvard Medical School and the University of Chicago. In 2012, Mazmanian was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his pioneering work on the human microbiome.
B. Brett Finlay, is a Canadian microbiologist well known for his contributions to understanding how microbes cause disease in people and developing new tools for fighting infections, as well as the role the microbiota plays in human health and disease. Science.ca describes him as one of the world's foremost experts on the molecular understanding of the ways bacteria infect their hosts. He also led the SARS Accelerated Vaccine Initiative (SAVI) and developed vaccines to SARS and a bovine vaccine to E. coli O157:H7. His current research interests focus on pathogenic E. coli and Salmonella pathogenicity, and the role of the microbiota in infections, asthma, and malnutrition. He is currently the UBC Peter Wall Distinguished Professor and a Professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories, Microbiology and Immunology, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Co-director and Senior Fellow for the CIFAR Humans and Microbes program. He is also co-author of the book Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World and The Whole-Body Microbiome: How to Harness Microbes - Inside and Out - For Lifelong Health. Finlay is the author of over 500 publications in peer-reviewed journals and served as editor of several professional publications for many years.
Yasmine Belkaid is an Algerian immunologist who is best known for her work studying host-microbe interactions in tissues and immune regulation to microbes. Belkaid currently serves as the director of the NIAID Microbiome program. On March 29, 2023, she was appointed as President of the Pasteur Institute for a six-year term, starting from January 2024.
Lesley Hoyles is a Welsh microbiologist who is Professor of Microbiome and Systems Biology at Nottingham Trent University. She combines in vivo and in vitro microbiology and bioinformatics research to better understand how the gut microbiota influences health and disease.
Dennis L. Kasper is an American microbiologist and immunologist, and the William Ellery Channing Professor of Medicine and Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. He leads the Kasper Laboratory within the Blavatnik Institute in the Department of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. He was also executive dean for academic programs at Harvard Medical School and director of the Channing Laboratory Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Amy Proal is an American microbiologist who studies the effects of bacterial, fungal, and viral pathogens on human health at the molecular level. She is one of the founders of PolyBio Research Foundation, a company investigating the basis of chronic infection-associated illnesses, and currently serves on the company's board of directors. She has recently been noted for her work investigating the causes of long covid.
Wendy Sarah Garrett is an American microbiologist who is the Irene Heinz Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. She holds a joint position in the Departments of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Kishana Yvonne Taylor is an American virologist, academic, and co-founder of the Black Microbiologists Association.
References
- 1 2 3 Wu, Katherine J. (September 28, 2020). "Black Microbiologists Push for Visibility Amid a Pandemic". The New York Times. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
- 1 2 3 4 "Ariangela Kozik, Ph.D." American Society for Microbiology. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Ariangela J. Kozik, PhD About". Ariangela J. Kozik, PhD. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
- 1 2 3 "Ariangela J. Kozik". University of Michigan. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
- 1 2 Taylor K, Kozik AJ, Spriggs C, Pittman N, Scott NR (April 2021). "Introducing the Black Microbiologists Association". The Lancet. Microbe. 2 (4): e131 –e132. doi: 10.1016/S2666-5247(21)00038-0 . PMID 35544186.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Kozik Lab". University of Michigan. Retrieved January 29, 2025.
- ↑ Kozik AJ (May 2018). "The Impact of Host Variables and Tumor Necrosis Factor on the Gut Microbiome in a Mouse Model of Crohn's Disease". Purdue e-Pubs. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
- ↑ Malcom, Kelly (February 6, 2023). "A link between asthma, obesity and the airway microbiome". Michigan Medicine. Retrieved January 29, 2025.
- ↑ Kozik AJ, Begley LA, Lugogo N, Baptist A, Erb-Downward J, Opron K, Huang YJ (April 2023). "Airway microbiota and immune mediator relationships differ in obesity and asthma". The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 151 (4): 931–942. doi:10.1016/j.jaci.2022.11.024. PMC 10566565 . PMID 36572355.