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Project

Brains (Back) to Brussels 2009 - Verankering : Systems-level analysis of the human microbiome in health and disease. (BRGEOZ154)

The functioning of the human body constitutes a complex interplay of human processes and 'services' rendered to us by the 1000 trillion microbial cells we carry. Disruption of this natural microbial flora is linked to infection, autoimmune diseases and cancer, but detailed knowledge about our microbial component remains scarce. Recent technological advances such as metagenomics and next-generation sequencing permit, for the first time, to study the various microbiota of the human body at a previously unseen scale. These advances have allowed the initiation of the International Human Microbiome Project (which I am currently involved in), aiming at genomically characterizing the totality of human-associated microorganisms (the "microbiome"). However, the complexity of metagenomic datasets makes their analysis a major bottleneck. This allowed the birth of a new, exciting subfield in computational biology which will eventually permit classical, cellular level systems biology progress towards modeling of entire communities ("eco-systems biology"), and untangling interspecies networks of competition, collaboration and communication at the molecular level. Here, I will combine large-scale, next-generation sequencing with novel computational approaches to investigate the healthy human microbiome at the systems level and study its alteration in disease. I will investigate the functioning of the human microbial flora, quantify and characterize its inter- and intra-individual variability, and investigate which host phenotypic factors are influencing its functional properties and phylogenetic composition (e.g. diet, gender, age, lifestyle, genetic background, etc). Next, I will focus on Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) as a model for dysbiosis-related disorders, combining host genotyping with intestinal metagenomic profiling. I will study the role of our natural microbiota in the pathogenesis of this complex disease through the investigation of phylogenetic and functional (e.g. metabolic) alterations of the gut metagenome in IBD. The results of this study allow developing novel treatment strategies and designing new diagnostic and prognostic tools.
Date:1 Oct 2009 →  30 Sep 2014
Keywords:Applied Biology
Disciplines:Biological sciences