For my first post-doc with Donata Vercelli and Fernando Martinez from the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center at the U of A, I switched from the soil and plant to the gut and lung microbiome, two other fascinating and dynamic environments where host-associated microbes have a large impact on host health. Dr. Vercelli had previously found an environmental microbiological link with asthma protection in Amish children who spent large amount of time in animal barns as compared to their Hutterite counterparts who have high asthma rates and do not spend time with animals. Experimental data confirmed this; dust from Amish homes given to mice is protective against experimental asthma whereas dust from Hutterite homes is not. As a postdoc, my role was to next ask whether the gut microbiome of Amish children was associated with protection from asthma as well. Using a germ-free mouse model, we found that mice associated with the gut microbiota from Amish children was protective from experimental asthma whereas that of Hutterite children was not, showing the strong role of the gut microbiome in asthma protection as well. We found mice that mice that received Amish gut microbiota had higher diversity and certain microbial consortia that were correlated with protective phenotypes (decreased airway hyperresponsiveness, decreased inflammatory eosinophilia, increased resident anti-inflammatory eosinophil recruitment to lungs), as compared to the mice that received Hutterite gut microbiota (Honeker et al., in revision, Nature Communications).
Linnea Honeker 