Research & Projects

Microbiomes by definition are vibrant micro-ecosystems that teem with a wide diversity of life, but in the field of the human gut microbiome, much of the focus remains on two-dimensional host-bacterial interactions. My background in soil science shaped an appreciation for the critical role of fungi in environmental systems, and I became curious about how fungi interact with hosts in the gut environment -- also termed the 'gut mycobiome'.

In this project, I dig into the fundamental themes of gut mycobiome assembly. I am conducting the first genome-wide association study to determine fungi-associated human genetic variants that may associate with human health and disease. To contextualize gut fungi in evolutionary relationships, I am investigating patterns of phylosymbiosis and codivergence of gut fungi and hominids (great apes that are our closest evolutionary ancestors). Uncovering evolutionary and genetic relationships with the human gut mycobiome provides strong evidence that gut fungi assemble deterministically and fundamentally widens the canonical two-dimensional perspective of human gut microbiomes.

In review - stay tuned for the paper!

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is rising globally and represents a major health care burden in the United States. T2D is characterized by high blood glucose and dysbiosis in the gut microbiome. The current first-line treatment for T2D is a drug called metformin, which was recently found to lower blood glucose in the host partially by altering the gut bacterial community. Probiotics are another widely used supplement that are hypothesized to lower blood glucose by altering the gut microbiome. 

My research investigated the following questions: 

• Metformin alters the gut bacterial community. How does it affect gut fungi?

• Do probiotics really work to lower blood glucose?

• Can probiotics and metformin be used together to combat metabolic disease?

These projects blended computational and experimental methods to determine how gut microbes interact with pharmaceutical treatments (metformin and probiotics) in the context of Type 2 diabetes and metabolic disease.