A framework for microbiome science in public health.
Wilkinson JE, Franzosa EA, Everett C, Li C, Hu FB, Wirth DF, Song M, Chan AT, Rimm E, Garrett WS, Huttenhower C.
Nat Med. 2021 Apr 05. PMID: 33820996
Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases
Immunology and Infectious Diseases
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Research
Dr. Huttenhower’s research focuses on computational biology at the intersection of microbial community function and human health. The human body carries some four pounds of microbes, primarily in the gut, and understanding their biomolecular functions, their influences on human hosts, and the metabolic and functional roles of microbial communities generally is one of the key areas of study enabled by high-throughput sequencing. First, computational methods are needed to advance functional metagenomics. How can we understand what a microbial community is doing, what small molecule metabolites or signaling mechanisms it’s employing, and how its function relates to its organismal composition? Second, our understanding of the human microbiome and its relationship with public health remains limited. Pathogens have been examined by centuries of microbiology and epidemiology, but we know relatively little about the transmission or heritability of the normal commensal microbiota, its carriage of pathogenic functionality, or its interaction with host immunity, environment, and genetics. Finally, more broadly, novel machine learning methodology is needed to leverage structured biological knowledge in high-dimensional genomic data analysis. The Huttenhower group works on a variety of computational methods for data mining in microbial communities, model organisms, pathogens, and the human genome.
In practice, this entails a combination of computational methods development for mining and integrating large multi’omic data collections, as well as biological analyses and laboratory experiments to link the microbiome in human populations to specific microbiological mechanisms. The lab has worked extensively with the NIH Human Microbiome Project to help develop the first comprehensive map of the healthy Western adult microbiome, and it currently co-leads one of the “HMP2” Centers for Characterizing the Gut Microbial Ecosystem in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. This is one of many open problems in understanding how human-associated microbial communities can be used as a means of diagnosis or therapeutic intervention on the continuum between health and disease.
Wilkinson JE, Franzosa EA, Everett C, Li C, Hu FB, Wirth DF, Song M, Chan AT, Rimm E, Garrett WS, Huttenhower C.
Nat Med. 2021 Apr 05. PMID: 33820996
McFarland AG, Bertucci HK, Littman E, Shen J, Huttenhower C, Hartmann EM.
Appl Environ Microbiol. 2021 03 11. 87(7). PMID: 33483311
Young C, Wood HM, Fuentes Balaguer A, Bottomley D, Gallop N, Wilkinson L, Benton SC, Brealey M, John C, Burtonwood C, Thompson KN, Yan Y, Barrett JH, Morris EJA, Huttenhower C, Quirke P.
Clin Cancer Res. 2021 Apr 15. 27(8):2246-2254. PMID: 33658300
Borowsky J, Haruki K, Lau MC, Dias Costa A, Väyrynen JP, Ugai T, Arima K, da Silva A, Felt KD, Zhao M, Gurjao C, Twombly TS, Fujiyoshi K, Väyrynen SA, Hamada T, Mima K, Bullman S, Harrison TA, Phipps AI, Peters U, Ng K, Meyerhardt JA, Song M, Giovannucci EL, Wu K, Zhang X, Freeman GJ, Huttenhower C, Garrett WS, Chan AT, Leggett BA, Whitehall VLJ, Walker N, Brown I, Bettington M, Nishihara R, Fuchs CS, Lennerz JK, Giannakis M, Nowak JA, Ogino S.
Clin Cancer Res. 2021 Feb 25. PMID: 33632927
Young C, Wood HM, Seshadri RA, Van Nang P, Vaccaro C, Melendez LC, Bose M, Van Doi M, Piñero TA, Valladares CT, Arguero J, Balaguer AF, Thompson KN, Yan Y, Huttenhower C, Quirke P.
Genome Med. 2021 Feb 16. 13(1):27. PMID: 33593386
Wang DD, Nguyen LH, Li Y, Yan Y, Ma W, Rinott E, Ivey KL, Shai I, Willett WC, Hu FB, Rimm EB, Stampfer MJ, Chan AT, Huttenhower C.
Nat Med. 2021 02. 27(2):333-343. PMID: 33574608
Wang Y, Yan Y, Thompson KN, Bae S, Accorsi EK, Zhang Y, Shen J, Vlamakis H, Hartmann EM, Huttenhower C.
Microbiome. 2021 01 21. 9(1):17. PMID: 33478576
Asnicar F, Berry SE, Valdes AM, Nguyen LH, Piccinno G, Drew DA, Leeming E, Gibson R, Le Roy C, Khatib HA, Francis L, Mazidi M, Mompeo O, Valles-Colomer M, Tett A, Beghini F, Dubois L, Bazzani D, Thomas AM, Mirzayi C, Khleborodova A, Oh S, Hine R, Bonnett C, Capdevila J, Danzanvilliers S, Giordano F, Geistlinger L, Waldron L, Davies R, Hadjigeorgiou G, Wolf J, Ordovás JM, Gardner C, Franks PW, Chan AT, Huttenhower C, Spector TD, Segata N.
Nat Med. 2021 02. 27(2):321-332. PMID: 33432175
Mitchell CM, Mazzoni C, Hogstrom L, Bryant A, Bergerat A, Cher A, Pochan S, Herman P, Carrigan M, Sharp K, Huttenhower C, Lander ES, Vlamakis H, Xavier RJ, Yassour M.
Cell Rep Med. 2020 Dec 22. 1(9):100156. PMID: 33377127
Accorsi EK, Franzosa EA, Hsu T, Joice Cordy R, Maayan-Metzger A, Jaber H, Reiss-Mandel A, Kline M, DuLong C, Lipsitch M, Regev-Yochay G, Huttenhower C.
Genome Biol. 2020 12 11. 21(1):301. PMID: 33308267
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