{"id":13746,"date":"2016-05-16T08:07:06","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T13:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=13746"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:28:27","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:28:27","slug":"microbiome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=13746","title":{"rendered":"Maximizing microbiome knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TingtingYangMicrobiomes \u2013 communities of diverse microorganisms that live together in different environments \u2013 are invisible to the naked eye. \u00a0But these communities play an enormous role in maintaining the health of ecosystems found in plants and soils, the ocean and atmosphere, and systems within the human body, like our digestive track.<\/p>\n

The White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) recently announced a new National Microbiome Initiative<\/a> to advance research into microbiome behavior and function. The effort promises to yield not just a better understanding of our natural world, but also insights into how microbiomes can be tapped to improve the health of humans, plants, animals and ecosystems. Although there are tens to hundreds of millions of different types of microbes, there is little current understanding of how they interact in communities or with their environments and the different disciplines that study the microbes in humans, animals, plants and the environment tend to be disconnected.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a microbial world,\u201d said Jeff Dangl<\/a>, a biology professor in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute<\/a>, and co-author of several key journal articles that have helped fuel the OSTP initiative. \u201cYou would not be alive today were it not for the microbes in the ocean that provide half of your oxygen, microbes in soil that make production of food possible and microbes in your gut that help you break down that food and help you fight off infection.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House initiative will fund research into unanswered questions common to all microbiomes.\u00a0 It will also fund better tools to study microbiomes and create opportunities for industry to commercialize discoveries. It aims to achieve coordinated research \u2013 linking scientists who study plant microbiomes with those studying human and environmental systems, and drawing in bioinformatics and data scientists essential to this area of research.<\/p>\n

Sound familiar? It should, because that type of work fits squarely within UNC-Chapel Hill\u2019s core research strengths. Faculty at Carolina are already leaders in these fields and are excited about the opportunities the new OSTP initiative could provide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to mine the wealth of knowledge and depth of experience already present at UNC \u2013 the exceptional faculty, staff and students conducting cutting-edge research on microbiomes from many different environments \u2013 by unifying it with a larger vision,\u201d said Adrian Marchetti<\/a>, professor of marine sciences in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. \u201cThis federal initiative may be the catalyst for us to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Story by Layla Dowdy, UNC Office of Research Communications
\nPhoto\u00a0by Tingting Yang, Ph.D. Marine Biology, UNC-Chapel Hill<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microbiomes \u2013 communities of diverse microorganisms that live together in different environments \u2013 are invisible to the naked eye. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carousel","category-natural-sciences-mathematics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47741,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13746\/revisions\/47741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}