{"id":180691,"date":"2023-07-23T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2023-07-23T18:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=180691"},"modified":"2023-07-21T16:22:04","modified_gmt":"2023-07-22T02:22:04","slug":"cobre-human-environmental-microbiome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2023\/07\/23\/cobre-human-environmental-microbiome\/","title":{"rendered":"$10.7M<\/abbr> for human, environmental microbiome research"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Researcher
Andrea Jani, COBRE research project leader, in her lab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Researchers at the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at Mānoa<\/a> have been awarded $10.7 million from the National Institutes of Health<\/a> (NIH<\/abbr>) to study how human health is impacted by exposure to microbes, how microbiomes are impacted by environmental and social-economic gradients in Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>, and how an animal\u2019s microbiome confers persistent health (using invertebrate hosts).<\/p>\n[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https:\/\/youtube.com\/shorts\/5cHUQsGh-MM” el_aspect=”916″ align=”right” el_id=”wrap-video-right”][vc_column_text]\n

“We want to develop the best and the brightest of the next generation of researchers that are experts in studying environmental microbiomes and their interaction with humans,” said Principal Investigator Anthony Amend, a professor with the Pacific Biosciences Research Center<\/a> (PBRC<\/abbr>).<\/p>\n

Building on Phase 1<\/h2>\n

The latest grant from the NIH<\/abbr> Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE<\/abbr>) is considered a Phase 2 grant. Five years ago, a $10.4-million Phase 1 grant<\/a> enabled the UH<\/abbr> Mānoa Integrative Center for Environmental Microbiomes and Human Health<\/a> (ICEMHH<\/abbr>) to emerge as a recognized center of excellence in understanding the ways environmental microbiomes impact human health using approaches that range from the molecular and chemical to the ecological.<\/p>\n

In addition to substantial scientific outputs, including 35 publications and more than $22 million in extramural investigator grants, Phase 1 investigators helped to establish world-class field sites<\/a> on multiple islands that leverage Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>\u2019s uniquely steep environmental gradients, and to develop tractable, local, model host systems to understand microbiome impacts in host health and physiology.<\/p>\n

COBRE<\/abbr> Phase 2 builds upon Phase 1 and encompasses four research projects:<\/p>\n

\"Two
Alex Samori and Kelli Konicek collect flies in M\u0101noa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
    \n
  1. Mohammad Arif, an assistant researcher in plant and environmental protection sciences<\/a>, is studying sources of food-born pathogens and mechanisms of how they establish on crops.<\/li>\n
  2. Ellinor Haglund, an assistant professor of chemistry<\/a>, is researching microbiome interactions with the hormone leptin in Drosophila<\/em> (fruit fly) obesity.<\/li>\n
  3. Andrea Jani, an assistant researcher in PBRC<\/abbr> is examining the interaction between microbiome and disease in Drosophila<\/em> models.<\/li>\n
  4. Corrie Miller, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women\u2019s health<\/a>, is researching factors influencing the vaginal microbiome and its role in preterm births.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Life sciences at the heart<\/h2>\n

    The “heart” of ICEMHH<\/abbr> is the Isabella Aiona Abbott Life Sciences Building<\/a> (LSB<\/abbr>), which houses teaching and research labs, as well as three core facilities for microscopy, genomic analysis and an insectary. The building also holds the labs of five graduated, current and proposed COBRE<\/abbr> researchers, as well as the core facility directors. Approximately 65% of the total research space is occupied by ICEMHH<\/abbr> personnel and facilities.<\/p>\n

    “What the COBRE<\/abbr> does is allow us to combine the ecology and then environmental diversity of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> and these Hawaiian systems with human health concepts,” said Jani. “That’s something that’s big and complex and that takes a lot of collaborative effort to do.”<\/p>\n

    Applications for infectious diseases<\/h2>\n
    \"close
    Drosophila crucigera<\/em>, a species of Hawaiian picture wing flies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Jani\u2019s lab is in the LSB<\/abbr>. She is being mentored by Phase 1 researcher Joanne Yew, who also oversees the Microbial Genomics and Analytical Laboratory core facility.<\/p>\n

    “The COBRE<\/abbr> energizes the state of microbiome research at the university,” Yew said. “So that means that it will attract people to come here and do microbiome research\u2014attract and build the intellectual environment.”<\/p>\n

    Jani is researching how the fruit fly microbiome responds to infection.<\/p>\n

    “Fruit flies allow us to study this infection process of infectious disease, to understand conceptually what causes the microbiome to be stable or not stable in the face of infection,” Jani said. “And then we can take especially some of the ecological principles, the ecological factors that contribute to stability, and start to apply those to humans.”<\/p>\n

    Beyond direct advances to human and environmental health, the COBRE<\/abbr> grant also benefits Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> residents in other ways.<\/p>\n

    “Our Phase 1 investigators were awarded more than $22 million in external grants, mostly from federal agencies, and that all comes back to the state in terms of salaries and expertise,” said Amend. “It’s really a boon for\u2014not just the university\u2014but for the people of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> as well.”<\/p>\n

    —by Kelli Abe Trifonovitch<\/em>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_masonry_media_grid grid_id=”vc_gid:1689990559652-a43b88bf-3423-4″ include=”180699,180695,180696,180698,180694,180697″][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A second grant of more than $10 million from the National Institutes of Health furthers UH<\/abbr> as a microbiome research center of excellence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,12],"tags":[251,212,31,1369,986,149,359,1473,9,56],"class_list":["post-180691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-video","tag-chemistry","tag-college-of-tropical-agriculture-and-human-resilience","tag-john-a-burns-school-of-medicine","tag-life-sciences-building","tag-microbiomes","tag-pacific-biosciences-research-center","tag-plant-and-environmental-protection-sciences","tag-school-of-life-sciences","tag-uh-manoa","tag-video-2","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180691"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180723,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180691\/revisions\/180723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}