Investigating the robustness of gut microbial functions across primates

It remains unclear which factors drives variation in the gut microbiome across humans. Past work has taken an evolutionary perspective and compared the gut microbiome of humans on Western diets to wild primates and humans on non-Western diets and identified particular microbes which are at different abundances. However, the focus of these studies has mainly been on which microbes are present and not what these microbes are doing. By applying my tool, PICRUSt2, to these gut microbiome sequencing datasets I will generate predicted functional profiles and identify potential microbial functions that have diverged in abundance across primate evolution. In addition, I will expand upon my host supervisor’s recently developed metrics of functional redundancy to determine how microbial functional redundancy has diverged across primate evolution. I expect to identify microbial functions linked to diet that have diverged along the human lineage along with functions that remain redundant along the human lineage, possibly due to selective pressure.

Faculty Supervisor:

Morgan Langille

Student:

Partner:

Tel Aviv University

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Life Sciences (not health); Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Biotechnology

University:

Dalhousie University

Program: