A universal pipeline for functionally characterizing the human microbiota at a massive scale
An NIH-funded academic collaboration
Health From Within
The community of microorganisms in our gastrointestinal tract—the gut microbiota—is one of the densest and most diverse bacterial ecosystems that we know about. Today, we need more powerful tools and insights in order to unravel the intrinsic complexity of the relationship between humans and their microbiota—and how to harness this relationship to engineer human health.
The Challenge
Although we critically need to enhance our fundamental understanding of the physiology of these bacteria, most human gut bacteria have never been studied with molecular genetic tools.
Further, we can’t accurately assign gene annotations based on homology because our body’s bacteria are too distantly related to well-studied model bacteria.
Systematic and multidisciplinary collaboration is urgently needed in order to unravel the functions of genes in human gut bacteria.
The GutWorks Approach
High-throughput genetics is an attractive approach for characterizing the biological functions of genes within the human microbiota. By applying many perturbations to large populations of genetically modified bacteria, we can carry out parallel assessment of nearly all the genes in a bacterial community. To apply this strategy, GutWorks is tackling the following challenges:
· Simplify the transformation of non-model bacteria in order to exploit genetic tools
· Develop a new genetic system for a non-model bacterium without extensively consuming time and resources
· Make it easy to adopt multiple technologies and laboratory workflows in order to compare data across teams
· Colonize ex-germ-free mice with mutants of interest for in vivo mouse experiments.
Who We Are
The GutWorks team includes leaders who are pioneering novel cultivation methods, electroporation for genetic transformation, and tools for assessing gene function in vitro and in vivo.
Through our combined expertise in bacteriology, microfluidics, high-throughput screening, host-microbe interactions, and imaging, we will produce genetic tools and fitness data for the vast community of microbiota researchers at unprecedented scale.
With support from our Scientific Advisory Board, GutWorks will deliver deep and transformative insights into the physiology of the human gut microbiota.
“Predictably harness microbiomes for human health. That’s our ultimate goal.”
— Dr. Kerwyn C. Huang, Stanford University
Learn more about our goals and technologies, and take a deep dive into our science.
Want to know what we’ve accomplished so far?
Check out our Resources page!
