A new study co-authored by MSI PIs Dan Knights (associate professor, Computer Science and Engineering; BioTechnology Institute) and members of his lab has shown that people’s response to particular foods is very personal. Any given food has a different effect on different people’s microbiomes. This research supports the idea that a one-size-fits-all diet plan may not be effective.
The study was published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe: AJ Johnson, P Vangay, GA Al-Ghalith, BM Hillman, TL Ward, RR Shields-Cutler, AD Kim, AK Shmagel, AN Syed, Personalized Microbiome Class Students8, J Walter, R Menon, K Koecher, D Knights. 2019. Daily Sampling Reveals Personalized Diet-Microbiome Associations in Humans. Cell Host & Microbe 25(6). doi: 10.1016/j.chom.2019.05.005.
An article about the research appears on the website Food Matters Live: New Study Confirms Personalised Reaction to Food.
Professor Knights uses MSI to develop and test computational methods that bring precision medicine to the microbiome. Research by his group has been featured on the MSI website: The Fungal Microbiome in Infants; Changes in the Human Gut Microbiome Caused by Colorectal Cancer.