The human microbiome and the food we eat
Every human body hosts trillions of microbial cells, which form a dynamic and adaptive ecosystem, referred to as the human microbiome. This lecture will be given in two parts. First we will provide a brief overview of the history of microbiology and how high throughput DNA sequencing has enabled an exponential increase in knowledge about the microbial world around and inside of us. The second section will describe our knowledge about the chemistry underlying the associations among food, microbes, and humans. This information highlights the importance of recycling organic wastes, and contextualizes the role of the food we eat and the microbes we host in this process.
SPEAKER BIO:
Dr. Julia M. Gauglitz
University of California, San Diego
Dr. Julia M. Gauglitz is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, San Diego. She is the project manager and co-founder of the Global FoodOmics project and a member of the Center for Microbiome Innovation. Prior to joining UC San Diego, she was an NSF awarded postdoctoral research fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and an NSF awarded graduate research fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Dr. Clarisse (Lisa) Marotz
University of California, San Diego
Lisa obtained her PhD in 2020 from UC San Diego in the Biomedical Sciences Program where she was co-mentored by Karsten Zengler and Rob Knight. She began a position as a postdoctoral fellow co-sponsored by Rob Knight and Jack Gilbert in July 2020. Lisa was a Neurobiology major during her undergraduate studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, and received a master’s in Medical Neuroscience from Charité Universitätsmedizin in Berlin, Germany. Following a stint in prostate cancer research, she has pivoted her scientific career to focus on elucidating the microbial world within us and its effect on all aspects of human health. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lisa is currently involved in a project to identify the spread and microbial context of SARS-CoV-2 in a hospital setting. Her long term research goals are to identify novel ways that the human microbiome may be influencing susceptibility to viral infection.
Her research interests include topics such as microbial and metabolic changes during food fermentation, nutrient uptake in marine bacteria, and the impact of diet on species ranging from cheetahs to humans. She specializes in using multidisciplinary multi-omic technologies to understand the chemistry and microbiology of our foods and how they interact with our bodies. In essence, discovering what is truly in our food to gain increased understanding of the role that metabolites and associated beneficial microbes play in health and disease.
