The Gibbons Lab, led by Dr. Sean Gibbons, develops experimental and computational approaches to dissect and engineer the functional outputs of the human gut microbiome to advance personalized medicine.
Dr. Sean Gibbons with members of his lab. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
Our gut microbiome – the trillions of microbes in our digestive system – differs substantially even between people, even identical twins, and responds in unique ways to dietary intake. To design microbiome-informed personalized diets to optimize our health, the Gibbons Lab, with NIH funding, is studying how the microbiome influences our individual responses to diet.
A colorful bowl of food. Photo credit: Food Photographer, Unsplash, recolored by ISB.
The Gibbons Lab is developing an online dashboard called My Digital Gut to predict the impact of personalized dietary changes before people make them. The program assesses someone’s current diet (no food diary needed) and guides individuals towards personally optimal nutrition. My Digital Gut is in the testing phase, seeking to eventually inform personalized clinical care.
3D rendering of bacteria. Image credit: AdobeStock, recolored by ISB.
Infants born to mothers with HIV, but not infected, do not respond well to rotavirus (annually kills more than 200,000 children) vaccines, and their guts are depleted in the critical newborn microbe Bifidobacterium infantis. The Gibbons Lab, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and South African researchers, where these births are frequent, are administering a B. infantis probiotic to see if it improves rotavirus vaccine efficacy.
Gibbons Lab members working at ISB. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
ISB Associate Professor Dr. Sean Gibbons is creating an online dashboard called My Digital Gut that will give anyone the ability to predict the impact of nutritional changes before making them. By supporting ISB, you can help us leverage our growing knowledge of the gut microbiome to make nutrition and healthcare personalized, predictive and preventive.
New research from ISB’s Gibbons Lab shows that computer models of gut metabolism can predict whether probiotics will successfully establish in an individual’s microbiome and how dietary prebiotics shape health-related molecules in the gut. The findings point toward a future of more personalized, predictable microbiome-based interventions.
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