Description:

Talk Title: Using Comparative Primate Research to Enrich our Understanding of Human-Microbiome Interactions

Description: Understanding of how gut microbes influence host physiology in disease states has grown over the past decades with the majority of microbiome studies using clinical approaches such as case-control comparisons. However, important gaps remain in our knowledge of what constitutes a healthy microbiome. Using comparative data from non-human primates can provide an important evolutionary perspective to help fill these gaps. Here, I present data describing how human gut microbiome influences on host metabolism, brain activity, and immune responses are similar or different to those of other primates. Our findings represent some of the first empirical data demonstrating how microbes could have influenced the evolution of multiple host body systems. They also provide a critical foundation for new explorations into the mechanisms through which microbes can cause disease and how conserved these mechanisms are across host contexts.