I'm looking into how ocean microbiota can metabolize pollutants and plastics, aiming to understand their role in environmental health.

I conduct pioneering studies on how our behavior and the environment can modify our gene expression.

Microbes can reflect our health status and actively affect our health, as shown in studies by Jeff Gordon's group at Washington University.

The Human Microbiome Project aimed to define healthy versus diseased microbiomes by studying diverse populations, revealing significant individuality in gut microbiomes and the challenges in establishing universal health standards. Additionally, the microbiomes of traditional populations represent the closest approximation to how our ancestors lived, suggesting that our current industrialized microbiome may be deteriorating due to factors like antibiotic use and a Western diet.

The collaboration between different research groups at Stanford has been essential for studying the impact of diet on the microbiome and human health, allowing for comprehensive human studies. We can monitor hundreds to thousands of different parameters in the immune system longitudinally from a blood draw, allowing us to see how the immune system changes in concert as we change the microbiome with diet.

Our flagship study, funded by philanthropy, aimed to understand how a high fiber diet versus a diet rich in live microbes affects the microbiome and immune system.

The microbiome is linked to mental health and cognition, suggesting it may influence decision-making, although more research is needed to understand this relationship.

The recent scholarship on microbes and the microbiome inspired me to include microbial characters in Sourdough, giving them personality on the page.

There's a growing field focused on reprogramming the gut microbiome, which is more malleable than our human genome, making it easier to change gut microbes for health improvements.