Human Microbiome Studies (HMS)
Overview
As a leading genomics research organization, the J. Craig Venter Institute has numerous projects and programs that are focused on this emerging research area to identify and characterize the human microbiome — the microbial populations that natively inhabit the human body — and to determine its role in health and disease. JCVI led the foray into this field with a seminal publication in 2006 and has since developed many active areas of research with various clinical sites. Here we outline these projects which investigate the relationship between human health and disease and how this correlates with changes in the human microbiome.
Featured Highlights
Bacterial Vaginosis (BV), also called nonspecific vaginitis or Gardnerella-associated vaginitis, is a condition that is estimated to affect...
In this study, we propose to investigate the Prokaryotic species associated with the gut microbiome using whole genome shotgun metagenomic...
We are developing computational tools to analyze the complexity of metagenomic sequencing data generated by the Human Microbiome Project.
Our goal is to determine how the composition of the human microbiome changes during long-term space exploration and to evaluate its...
Clinical dogma is that healthy urine is sterile and the presence of bacteria with an inflammatory response is indicative of urinary tract...
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality associated with chronic liver disease ranks as the 12th most common...
Chronic wound is a major public healthcare burden that costs approximately $25 billion per year and affects about 1% of the US population....
Psoriasis, a highly prevalent disease of humans of unknown cause, although it is considered to be a T cell — mediated autoimmune disease,...
The NIH Human Microbiome Project (HMP) was initiated to help determine the core human microbiome, to understand the changes in the human...
Tooth decay (caries) remains a major health issue in the United States and worldwide with a prevalence of more than 50% in young children...
Prospective studies of immune responses before, during, and after a given perturbation, whether by infection or vaccination, provide the...
The nasopharynx (NP) is home to many microorganisms that begin colonizing the body soon after birth. The collection of microbes, the...
Diarrheal disease affects one billion people per year worldwide, yet >80% of these cases are of unknown etiology. Travelers’ diarrhea or...
The distal esophagus is an important anatomic locus where gastric acid reflux causes reflux esophagitis (RE), Barrett's esophagus (BE)...
As the single most important cause of serious lower respiratory tract disease in infants and young children in the United States and...
Many human microbial infectious diseases including oral caries are polymicrobial in nature, and closely associated with ecological...
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is estimated to have infected one third of the world’s population based on reports from surveys on...
Infection susceptibility and disease severity is regulated by a complex balance between the genotype of the pathogen, the genotype of the...
In addition to more comprehensively studied human genetic factors new paradigms that influence and perhaps define healthy aging in humans...
Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D) is characterized by autoimmune destruction of the insulin producing - cells of pancreatic islets. It is...
Biofilms are matrix-enclosed microbial assemblies adhering to non-biological and biological surfaces. They undergo dynamic...
Urinary metaproteomics of urine sediments can be used to characterize host-pathogen interactions and diagnose urinary tract infections and...
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), in partnership with the JCVI, is developing a 2,000 square foot bilingual (English and...
