Abstract:

The trillions of microorganisms living in the human body, collectively known as the human microbiota, have a tremendous influence on human health and diseases. Although it was virtually impossible to study them until a few years ago, next generation sequencing technologies have enabled us to access and characterize these microbiota in a culture-free manner using metagenomic sequencing. Thanks to these developments, a new family of studies known as metagenome-wide association studies (MGWAS) have recently reported significant associations between the human microbiota and diseases, such as type 2 diabetes. This is only the beginning of a new trend to elucidate the role of host-associated microbiota in disease mechanisms, and bioinformatics is becoming increasingly important in this endeavor. In this talk, current status of this field of research and ongoing research in my laboratory on the human gut microbiome will be discussed.