This $395,701 Project Grant award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Biomedical Research and Research Training Program (CFDA 93.859) supports research to understand the complex interactions between microbes and their animal hosts, such as bees and insects. The research program aims to identify the mechanisms that shape microbial community composition and the subsequent effects on host health. Key focus areas include investigating interbacterial competition, host...
This federal Project Grant award of $388,750 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Biomedical Research and Research Training Program (CFDA 93.859) supports research to understand how evolutionary processes shape genomic variation, with a focus on compact genomes found in many pathogens. The project aims to generate better estimates of the genome-wide fitness effects of new mutations, explore how selection against deleterious mutations affects variation in...
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) awarded a $233,250 Project Grant (CFDA 93.855 - Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research) to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) to engineer "self-recirculating phages" as a platform for targeted gene therapy of the human microbiome. The goal is to develop a novel phage-based delivery system that can safely and efficiently transduce specific bacterial species within complex microbial communities,...
This $438,608 federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855), will support research to determine the mechanism by which host genetics directly influence the intestinal population of Lactobacillus bacteria. The research will use a murine model to eliminate environmental factors and isolate the role of host genetics in shaping the gut microbiome. By taking an...
This $390,000 Project Grant award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Biomedical Research and Research Training Program (CFDA 93.859) aims to systematically characterize novel gut microbial ene-reductases and their role in shaping the chemical environment of the human gut. The research will develop a multi-stage platform to identify, validate, and understand the mechanistic basis of these enzymes, which play a critical role in mediating biotransformations between...
This $851,545 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) program supports research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to investigate the interactions between plant microbiomes and the plant immune system. The key objectives are to understand: 1) how beneficial bacteria like Sphingomonas colonize plant roots while evading the plant immune response, 2) how beneficial bacteria suppress the plant immune system, and 3) how...
This $403,750 Project Grant award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) under CFDA 93.859 Biomedical Research and Research Training program aims to unravel the relationships between gut and blood microbial signatures and immune responses in sepsis patients. The research, to be conducted by Duke University over the period from May 1, 2025 to February 28, 2030, will use a meta-systems approach to integrate gut microbiome profiling, metabolomics, measures of intestinal...
This Project Grant award in the amount of $144,912 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports research at North Carolina State University to investigate the factors shaping host-associated microbial communities using the honey bee as a model system. The research aims to integrate concepts from ecology and evolution to understand how environmental factors, species interactions, and evolutionary dynamics influence the composition of...
This Project Grant award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) under the Biomedical Research and Research Training Program (CFDA 93.859) provides $133,246 to the University of California, Santa Cruz to develop flexible Bayesian statistical methods for comprehensive analysis of microbiome data from large-scale studies. The key objectives are to create methods for inferring microbial community dynamics in relation to host and environmental factors, as well as extend the...
This NSF Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) Project Grant award of $600,000 to Emory University will investigate how microbiome communities, which are communities of bacteria and other microbes that live in and on organisms, can resist change and transition to alternate states. The project will use the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model host to better define the stability and properties of alternate microbiome states, as well as how factors like antibiotic treatment and host...
This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Biomedical Research and Research Training Program (CFDA 93.859) provides $759,234 to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to conduct research on understanding host-microbiome coevolution and genetic variation in immunity using an insect model system. The 5-year project aims to untangle the specific effects of host and bacterial genetic variation on the microbiome, and to study natural and ecologically-relevant host-microbe pairings. The research will leverage techniques from innate immunology, functional and forward genetics, and dual-RNA sequencing to understand the bi-directional evolution of animal immune systems and beneficial microbes. The project's findings are expected to provide insights relevant to human health, including whether adaptation to beneficial microbes trades off with pathogen resistance, and how control of the microbiome shapes microbial virulence.