Gary Huffnagle.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
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The Dynamics of the Lung Microbiome during Health and Disease
Gary Huffnagle.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
The macro- and micro-anatomic features of the lungs are very much distinct from that of the gastrointestinal tract. The factors that regulate microbial residence, growth and metabolism in the lungs will, therefore, be very different from those in the GI tract. In the past decade, culture-independent techniques of microbial identification have revealed a previously unappreciated complexity to the microbial ecosystem of the lungs. Numerous studies have shown that the airways are not sterile and the composition of the lung microbiome is determined by the balance of three factors: (1) microbial immigration into the airways from the nose, mouth and air, (2) elimination of microbes from the airways, and (3) the relative reproduction rates of its community members, as determined by regional growth conditions. Any change in the microbiome – within an individual or across disease states – must be due to some perturbation in these factors. Thus, the microbiome of the lungs can significantly change during disease, which has potential significant implications for respiratory disease pathogenesis and therapeutic interventions.
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Gary Huffnagle. Received his PhD in immunology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. He holds faculty appointments (Professor) in Internal Medicine, Microbiology & Immunology, and Molecular Cellular & Developmental Biology, as well as an endowed professorship in the Mary H. Weiser Food Allergy Center at the University of Michigan. He was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology of the American Society for Microbiology in 2013 and has been a frequent reviewer for the NIH (USA). The overall goals of his current research are to identify and delineate the interactions between the microbiome (lung and gut) and the immune system. Using animal models, clinical samples and in vitro assays, his laboratory is investigating host-microbiome interactions in the control of pulmonary inflammation, allergic responses and infectious disease. Over the past decade, his laboratory has developed expertise in applying high-throughput sequencing and gene expression technologies to biological processes and disease, including bacterial genomics and the microbiome.
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