This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. This project has two components. The first was intended to examine the biology of gut bacteria. Our adult intestine is home to an almost inconceivable number of micro-organisms. The size of the population up to 100 trillion far exceeds the size of all other microbial communities associated with our body s surfaces, and is equivalent to 10 times our total number of somatic and germ cells. The genomes of gut microbes may contain two orders of magnitude more genes than our own genome, and endow us with physiologic capacities we have not had to evolve on our own. Thus, it seems appropriate to view ourselves as a composite of many species and our genetic landscape as an amalgam of genes embedded in our H. sapiens genome and in the genomes of our affiliated microbial partners (the microbiome ). In other words, our microbiota and this microbiome are manifestations of who we are genetically and metabolically, and a reflection of our state of well-being. We are examining the genomic and metabolic foundations of host-bacterial mutualism (symbiosis) in the gut of the mouse. Because of the interest in interactions of gut flora with malignancy, the second project relates to detection of cancer. In this study we are using NMR to detect the transition to malignancy, again in a standard mouse model.
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