Post by livininhope on Feb 10, 2015 21:32:31 GMT
There is a lab in Canada doing research on gut bacteria using a “robo-gut” and researching how gut bacteria affects conditions like IBD, C-diff, Autism and cancer. Also how does diet affect gut bacteria. This would be a brilliant opportunity to have fecal body/tmau odour researched – they have the means and experience to do it! I would assume the problem would be the funding. Would it not be a good idea for MeBo to contact them so that perhaps they would consider this area in the future?
They have also developed a transplant called Repoopulate and I have put details of this on separately. For info on the lab I have given details below:
Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Email: eav@uoguelph.ca
Office: SSC 3252
Ext: 53366
Lab: SSC 3204
Ext: 54478
Research
Research in my laboratory is focused on the study of the normal human gut microbiota, both in disease and in health. The research can be loosely divided into several main areas centered on fundamental questions in the field of microbial ecology of the gut:
1. WHAT GROWS THERE?
The microbial world inside the human gut, though not without an intrinsic 'ick' factor, is a fascinating place, brimming with diversity on an enormous scale, but yet very poorly understood. Whilst molecular signatures have shown that the microbiota community within the gut can contain many hundreds of bacterial species, only a small percentage of these species are understood in terms of their biology. The lack of knowledge in this area stems from the fact that, as yet, the conditions required to culture most of the bacterial species resident in the human gut are not understood. In my laboratory, we are developing new techniques to culture and study novel bacterial species from the gut in order to better understand how these species might contribute to the remarkable homeostasis of the microbiota community as a whole. Central to our research approach, we have developed a continuous culture system to model the bacterial communities within the distal gut, the most densely populated part of the human body in terms of microbes. Dubbed the Robogut, our model contributes to many of the projects within the lab.
We collaborate closely with Dr. Cezar Khursigara within MCB, and with his group we are developing cutting-edge methods to image and characterize microbial interactions within the gut, with a particular emphasis on understanding the interplay of the normal human flora with introduced probiotic bacteria.
We have an extensive collaboration with the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whereby we have provided, and continue to provide, a significant number of the bacterial isolates requested for genome sequencing through the Human Microbiome Project.
2. HOW DOES THE GUT MICROBIOTA RESPOND TO ITS ENVIRONMENT?
We are interested in the metabolic output of the gut microbiota and how this changes in response to environmental stimuli. We are involved in an ongoing project in collaboration with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to determine how the colonic microbiota derived from different individuals responds to dietary substrates derived from pulses that are processed in different ways, with a view to understanding how diet may be tailored to microbiota types to enhance health. We are also interested in the response of the gut microbiota to drugs, food additives, and host proteins. Together with the Aucoin lab, University of Waterloo, we are exploring proton NMR as a tool for shotgun metabolomics of microbial ecosystems to help us understand metabolic shifts in response to microbiota perturbation.
3. WHICH BACTERIAL SPECIES OF THE NORMAL MICROBIOTA CAN CONTRIBUTE TO DISEASE?
In a healthy person, despite the constantly changing environment within the gut, the resident microbiota maintain a largely homeostatic balance that is unique to the host. It is becoming increasingly clear that when this balance is shifted, so-called dysbiosis, the consequences to the host can be highly detrimental. My lab studies 4 key diseases with connections to the gut microbiota: Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), regressive (late-onset) autism, recurrent (refractive) Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) and colorectal cancer.