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Variations in the Microbiome Associated with Health, Disease
ISB researchers examined the associations between the gut microbiomes of about 3,400 people and roughly 150 host characteristics. The team looked at diet, medication use, clinical blood markers, and other lifestyle and clinical factors, and found evidence that variations of the gut microbiome are associated with health and disease.
Answering Nature’s Call: How Scientists Are Mining Sewage To Track Population Health
Everybody pees and poops. What if there was a way to use the byproducts of our everyday bodily functions to understand the general health of a population? That is exactly what MIT’s Dr. Eric Alm is pursuing. In an ISB-Town Hall Seattle live stream, Alm discussed the promise of this novel form of public health tracking.
It’s ‘Either/Or’ for Two Common Gut Microbiome Genera, and Switching Teams Is Tougher Than Expected
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.
New Modeling Tool Allows Microbiome Researchers to Map Community Ecology to Ecosystem Function
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.
Using Blood to Predict Gut Microbiome Diversity
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.
ISB Microbiome Researcher Dr. Sean Gibbons Featured in TIME Article
Freaked out about a “germy” bathroom? You don’t need to be. ISB Assistant Professor and microbiome researcher Dr. Sean Gibbons was featured prominently in an article, headlined “The Germiest Place in your Bathroom Isn’t Your Toilet,” published online by TIME.
All About the Human Microbiome
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.
Reconstructing 'Ötzi' the Iceman’s last meal
Members of the Moritz lab, as part of an international consortium centered in Bolzano Italy, reports this week in Cell, “Current Biology”, a multi-omic approach to identify the stomach contents and microbiome of the 5300 year old Mummy, Oetzi, the Iceman from the Oetzal Alps on the Austrian/Italian border.
ISB's Dr. Sean Gibbons on the importance of the human microbiome
“This new organ that we’re coming to recognize as the microbiome is part and parcel to the functionality of the whole system, and if it breaks down, if it starts to fall apart, we start to get sick,” said Dr. Sean Gibbons, ISB’s newest faculty member, in a WGBH Forum Network presentation.
Dr. Sean Gibbons joins ISB faculty as WRF Distinguished Investigator
Dr. Sean Gibbons has joined ISB as our newest faculty member. Gibbons’ new position brings a number of changes, including relocating to the Pacific Northwest from the Northeast. Read on for a Q&A with Gibbons that sheds light on his research career to date, areas of study and even a hidden talent.
Baliga Lab: ‘The Universe Under a Microscope’
This is an excerpt from Environmental Microbiology Reports, 2015, authored by Arjun Raman, a postdoc in the Baliga Lab here at Institute for Systems Biology. The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. Information distilled over four billion years of biological evolution. Incidentally, all the organisms on the Earth are made essentially of that stuff. An…
‘Decoding DNA: The Future of DNA Sequencing’: Dr. Lee Hood Appears on Australian Radio Show
Dr. Lee Hood was interviewed by Dr. Norman Swan, of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, for the "Health Report" show. The interview aired on radio on Feb. 24, 2014. Listen to the radio segment. SEGMENT TRANSCRIPT: (Editor's note: ABC identifies Institute for Systems Biology as part of the University of Washington in the audio and in the transcript. ISB is an independent nonprofit organization and NOT a part of the UW.)…
ISB’s 2012 Annual Report is Now Online
ISB's annual report is now available. This year, we created a web site for the report. It highlights nine headlines from 2012 and also includes a stirring piece from our president, Dr. Lee Hood, on "Inventing the Future." You can explore the site at: annualreport.isbscience.net/2012.
We Study Microbes Because It’s Good for Your Health
Here’s a piece adapted from Michael Pollan’s latest book “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation” which discusses how processed foods and the modern diet have made us more obese and more likely to get sick. He makes a case for eating more fermented foods that haven’t been pasteurized – probiotics, live-culture foods – in order to get the good bacteria back in our guts. At ISB, the microbiome is an…
ISB and the Microbiome
What You Saw in the News: 2012 was the year of the microbiome. Feature stories about the trillions of microbes found in our environment and on/in human bodies appeared in publications such as The Economist, the New York Times, The Scientist, The New Yorker, Wired, Scientific American, and Discover. The NIH’s Human Microbiome Project published a report in Nature. The Earth Microbiome Project held its first international conference, which took…