Imagine an entire civilization of trillions of microorganisms living in harmony inside of your digestive system. This microbiome is unique to each individual and varies greatly based on many genetic and environmental factors. The complexity of gut health can often make diagnosis of maladies difficult especially when new variables are introduced. In fact up to 90% of all diseases can be traced back to the gut and the health of the microbiome.

Researchers hope to create personal prescriptive nutrition platforms that could help medical professionals design diet plans and prescribe different pre- and probiotics tailored to each individual’s specific gut microbiome signatures and overall health goals. Additionally developing a metabolite identification database would increase efficiency in diagnosis methods and outcomes.

The research was done in collaboration with the lab of Professor Isaac Cann at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology as well as NCSA researchers Weihao Ge Misael Trigo and Christina Fliege and undergraduate Andrew Robinson who is building an interactive dashboard where researchers and clinicians can visualize results. Robinson is part of the Center’s Students Pushing INnovation (SPIN) program and partially sponsored by NCSA’s Healthcare Innovation Program Office (HIPO) which provides powerful methods tools and ecosystems for translational research and innovation in support of healthcare advancement.

Illinois Computes has been pivotal in encouraging this collaboration and allowing us to develop targeted tools via research notebooks to allow researchers in the Cann Lab to analyze and uncover the hidden stories in the substantial Omics data they have collected developing this platform Bianchi said. This collaboration has been a great opportunity to work with the professors graduate and undergraduate students who do these experiments in the lab in order to develop analysis tools that work for them and that they can further develop themselves to meet future project goals.

Source: https://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/unlocking-the-mysteries-of-the-human-gut/