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Laura Bridgewater is the Associate Academic Vice President for Faculty Development at Brigham Young University (BYU). Previously she was the associate dean in the College of Life Sciences at BYU. Her research focused on the way stress affects gut microbiota in mice and genes involved with osteoarthritis and BMP2.
Bridgewater graduated from Brigham Young University in 1989 with a degree in Microbiology. She received her Ph.D in Genetics from George Washington University in 1995 and completed her post doctoral studies at M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center in Houston, Texas in 1999. [1] She was the chair of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology in the College of Life Sciences at Brigham Young University from 2011 to 2014, [2] [3] and associate dean in the College of Life Sciences 2016–2018. [3] [4]
Bridgewater's research focuses on bone and cartilage tissue in joints and the genes that could potentially cure osteoarthritis. [4] She is also conducting research on mice and the effect of stress on gut microbiota. [5] She found that the gut microbiota in female mice respond to stress in a way that is similar to the way they respond to a high-fat diet. [6] One of her discoveries was a variant of BMP2 in the nucleus called nBMP2 which affects intercellular calcium transport, which can alter muscle function, memory and cell division, indicating possible ties to dementia and cancer. [7] She has been published in academic journals including BMC Cell Biology and BioMed Research International and Scientific Reports. [4]
Laura Bridgewater is married to Tim Bridgewater, a Utah Valley business man who ran for the United States Senate in 2010. They reside in Provo, UT [8] and have four children. [9] Laura is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [9]
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.
Bacteroides is a genus of Gram-negative, obligate anaerobic bacteria. Bacteroides species are non endospore-forming bacilli, and may be either motile or nonmotile, depending on the species. The DNA base composition is 40–48% GC. Unusual in bacterial organisms, Bacteroides membranes contain sphingolipids. They also contain meso-diaminopimelic acid in their peptidoglycan layer.
The BYU College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences is a college located on the Provo, Utah campus of Brigham Young University and is housed in the Spencer W. Kimball Tower and Joseph F. Smith Building. The BYU College of Family Living was organized on June 28, 1951, while the BYU College of Social Sciences was organized in 1970. These two colleges merged to form the current college in 1981. The first dean of the college was Martin B. Hickman. The college includes nine major departments: Anthropology, Economics, Geography, History, Political Science, Psychology, The School of Family Life, Social Work, and Sociology. There are 21 different majors and 21 different minors that students can choose from, including 9 majors that have a correlating minor.
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.
The Religious Studies Center (RSC) at Brigham Young University (BYU) sponsors and publishes scholarship on the culture, history, scripture, and doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Marie Cornwall is the editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, a professor of sociology and women's studies at Brigham Young University (BYU) and a former director of BYU's Women's Research Institute.
Nancy A. Moran is an American evolutionary biologist and entomologist, University of Texas Leslie Surginer Endowed Professor, and co-founder of the Yale Microbial Diversity Institute. Since 2005, she has been a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. Her seminal research has focused on the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum and its bacterial symbionts including Buchnera (bacterium). In 2013, she returned to the University of Texas at Austin, where she continues to conduct research on bacterial symbionts in aphids, bees, and other insect species. She has also expanded the scale of her research to bacterial evolution as a whole. She believes that a good understanding of genetic drift and random chance could prevent misunderstandings surrounding evolution. Her current research goal focuses on complexity in life-histories and symbiosis between hosts and microbes, including the microbiota of insects.
The gut–brain axis is the two-way biochemical signaling that takes place between the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system (CNS). The term "microbiota–gut–brain axis" highlights the role of gut microbiota in these biochemical signaling. Broadly defined, the gut–brain axis includes the central nervous system, neuroendocrine system, neuroimmune systems, the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, sympathetic and parasympathetic arms of the autonomic nervous system, the enteric nervous system, vagus nerve, and the gut microbiota.
A microbiome is the community of microorganisms that can usually be found living together in any given habitat. It was defined more precisely in 1988 by Whipps et al. as "a characteristic microbial community occupying a reasonably well-defined habitat which has distinct physio-chemical properties. The term thus not only refers to the microorganisms involved but also encompasses their theatre of activity". In 2020, an international panel of experts published the outcome of their discussions on the definition of the microbiome. They proposed a definition of the microbiome based on a revival of the "compact, clear, and comprehensive description of the term" as originally provided by Whipps et al., but supplemented with two explanatory paragraphs, the first pronouncing the dynamic character of the microbiome, and the second clearly separating the term microbiota from the term microbiome.
The 1911 modernism controversy at Brigham Young University was an episode involving four professors at Brigham Young University (BYU), who between 1908 and 1911 widely taught evolution and higher criticism of the Bible, arguing that modern scientific thought was compatible with Christian and Mormon theology. The professors were popular among students and the community but their teachings concerned administrators, and drew complaints from stake presidents, eventually resulting in the resignation of all four faculty members, an event that "leveled a serious blow to the academic reputation of Brigham Young University—one from which the Mormon school did not fully recover until successive presidential administrations."
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.
The David O. McKay School of Education (SOE) at Brigham Young University (BYU) specializes in teaching, administration, communication disorders, and educational inquiry. It is located in three buildings on BYU's campus in Provo, Utah, the David O. McKay Building, the John Taylor Building, and the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse. It was ranked number 84 in the United States for best education schools for 2021.
Beronda Montgomery is a writer, science communicator, and researcher. In 2022, she moved to Grinnell College as professor of biology and vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college. Prior to Grinnell, Montgomery served as Michigan State University Foundation Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics. She was also a member of the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory. Her research group investigates how photosynthetic organisms adapt to changes in their environment. Her scholarship extends beyond biology and into studying mentorship and faculty development to develop evidence-based strategies to foster equity and inclusion in academia. Together with Tanisha Williams and other members of the Black Botanists Week organizing committee, Montgomery co-founded and co-organizes Black Botanists Week.
Yasmine Belkaid; is an immunologist, currently President of the Institut Pasteur. She has Algerian citizenship by her father and French citizenship by her mother, and she also holds US citizenship.
Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a psychologist and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University. She is a fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and Association for Psychological Science.
Keith A. Crandall is an American computational biologist, bioinformaticist, and population geneticist at George Washington University, where he is the founding director of the Computational Biology Institute, and professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics.
María Gloria Domínguez-Bello is a Venezuelan-American microbial ecologist that has worked on adaptations of gut fermentation organs in animals, gastric colonization by bacteria, assembly of the microbiota in early life, effect of practices that reduce microbiota transmission and colonization in humans, and effect of urbanization. She is the Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her lab at collaborates in multidisciplinary science, integrating microbiology, immunology, pediatrics, nutrition, anthropology, environmental engineering and architecture/urban studies, and microbial ecology.
Peter J. Turnbaugh is a microbiologist and a professor at University of California, San Francisco. He is known for his research on the metabolic activities performed by the trillions of microbes that colonize humans' adult bodies. Turnbaugh and his research group use interdisciplinary approaches in preclinical models and human cohorts to study the mechanisms through which the gut microbiome influences nutrition and pharmacology.
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.
Elaine Yih-Nien Hsiao is an American biologist who is Professor in Biological Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles. Her research considers the microbes that impact human health. She was a 2022 Laureate for the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.