Grant: Project Grant

Human health is intimately connected to our microbiota, a unique, constantly evolving consortium of trillions of bacteria that live in and on our bodies. Gut microbes produce compounds that are absorbed into our blood, providing nourishment, and affecting diverse functions such as digestion, immunity, neurodevelopment, as well as colonization resistance against invading and potentially harmful microorganisms, or "pathogens". Antibiotics have been shown to disrupt the gut microbiota and decrease its ability to protect the host against infection. Beyond antibiotics, it is not known what other microbiota disruptions may reduce colonization resistance. My lab has been investigating how microbiota disruptions and the loss of specific microbiota members affects infection by gut pathogens. In this project we will use a combination of cutting-edge experimental and computational techniques to study how pathogens infect and colonize the gut when certain microbiota species are lost. This work will also investigate microbiota therapies that can counteract the loss of species and increase microbiota diversity to promote resilience to infection, while identifying the mechanisms involved in microbiota resilience to pathogen invasion. This research will lead to a deeper understanding of pathogen infections and inform the development of new probiotic therapies that will benefit the health of millions of Canadians.