Resistance of the Human-Associated Microbial Community to Antibiotics and Dietary Manipulations -- Presented by Dr. Anthony Fodor

Abstract:

Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing have revealed the startling complexity of human-associated microbial communities.  In our ongoing studies, we are investigating how environmental perturbations affect the structure of the host-associated microbial community in individual humans over time.  In one study, we have collected stool samples from human subjects who were placed under a strictly controlled diet in a hospital setting. We have found that diet-induced microbial changes in each patient are overwhelmed by persistent individual differences between patients that resist even a two-month exposure to a controlled research diet.  In a separate study, we have followed the lung microbial community in chronically infected Cystic Fibrosis patients and have found a surprising stability in the composition of the microbial community even in the face of intensive antibiotic regimes.
 Our results suggest a central paradox in the study of human associated metagenomic communities: while the environment must ultimately shape the microbial community over the long-term, there is surprising stability in the face of severe short-term perturbations.  By applying new approaches in bioinformatics to tried and true low-cost "fingerprint" methods as well as the latest high-throughput sequencing technologies, our lab hopes to better understand the interactions between host and microbes that shape for each individual a unique microbial community.