Background and current state of research
Myriads of indigenous microbes inhabit the mammalian intestinal milieu and reportedly form the first line of defence against pathogenic infections. A growing body of experimental data has established the vital role of symbiotic microbiota in intestinal homeostasis. Several gut-associated microbial communities have been found to play diverse roles e.g. in nutrient metabolism, production of short chain fatty acids and maturation of the immune system.
Our goals
The Native gut communities tend to regenerate after a pathogenic or antibiotic aberration (e.g.: diarrhoea or antibiotic treatment). The reconstituted microbial composition may or may not recover fully after this resilience event, which leads to acute or benign disease response. My doctoral project focusses on identifying the resilience associated genes and establishing the interaction network of altered microbial composition and affected metabolic pathways. This work is aimed at corroborating the effects of gene mutations on gut microbial resilience in gut microbiota using state-of-the-art day high-throughput pyrosequencing(FLX 454) and miseq.
More information
This project is related to project 5: "Epigenetic marks of a stable host-microbiota association in the mammalian gut"