Last week, the SHM cohort attended lecture by Dr. Julie Segre, Head of Microbial Genomics at the National Human Genome Research Institute. Hear what some of the students took away from this engaging evening.
A microbiome is a group of microorganisms that shares a location in the human body. Microbiomes exist alongside the human body, but also affect processes which occur in organs such as the intestinal tract and the skin. The Human Microbiome Project sequenced the genome of the entire human microbiome. Similar to the how Human Genome Project allowed an entirely new category of genetics research to emerge, the Human Microbiome project has opened doors for many new studies of the human microbiome and its effects on health.
The most interesting part of the lecture was hearing about current research going on in the field. It is incredible that diseases may be treated by simply replacing microorganisms in a person’s body. This has great potential in lessening the negative effects of hospitalization for immunosuppressed patients. By characterizing microbiomes, doctors can also figure out which treatment will work before writing a prescription, thus improving the lives of patients. Additionally, I enjoyed hearing about how bioinformatics is used to analyze genomic data. Bioinformatics, statistical genetics, and data analytics in general are all fields I am very interested in. It is amazing that this much progress has been made in a field which did not even exist a decade ago.
- Margaret Steiner, SHM
One of Dr. Segre’s most prevalent themes across her talk was that of research in understanding where different microscopic organisms lived on the human body and in what ways they could help or harm us. She explained that, like the Earth, the human body is compromised by dozens of varied environments (from dry, to moist, or to oily) and each of these environments is capable of supporting an array of microorganisms.
Although many people may assume that a prevalence of bacteria and fungi in the human body is harmful, the vast majority of these organisms are completely harmless and may even aid us. As an example of this, Dr. Segre described how bacteria in our stomach and intestines aid our body in digesting food so that we may better absorb its nutrients. However, it is also true that other microorganisms are capable of great harm, such as those that infect the lungs, other internal organs, or give skin abrasions. The importance in this field of science therefore, is to determine which cultures of bacteria are causing harm in different areas of the body and in which ways this can be prevented.
One of the most interesting concepts to me in this talk was that of recent years work to study the human microbiome in an attempt to gather more data on these organisms. Through this work, they have already been successful in mapping out where certain organisms tend to reside in the human body and compare the ratios of microorganisms in healthy and diseased patients. Dr. Segre described how this information has begun to allow for new sources of treatments for infections, such as in eczema. In recent clinical work, young patients who suffered from infectious flares were studied, both in their healthy, treated times and their worst flares, for the composition of microorganisms in their skin. Interestingly enough, what researchers discovered was that the ratio between different bacteria altered greatly between the patients’ flares and their healthy conditions. This information could potentially be used in the future for doctors to provide patients treatment that would bring the bacterial ratios back to where they are in healthy conditions, and somehow maintain them in that composition.
- Natasha Fern, SHM
Viewing the “maps” of how organisms congregate on the body is helpful to me now as someone with sensitive skin because it is a window into the latent cause of skin conditions. I am very interested in the way that this knowledge can be used to help treat people with skin conditions. Better alternatives to trial and error and harsh prescription treatments could be developed with the type of technology that Dr. Segre described. For me, the most captivating part of the presentation was the possibility of tracking populations of microorganisms on skin to predict eczema flare-ups. The transition from managing symptoms to preventative care in the treatment of eczema would relieve a large burden on the parents and children in situations of severe eczema. I am excited to see what progress this field makes in the future, and what new treatments will be developed for the large range of conditions affected by the human microbiome.
- Caroline Rexrode, SHM