{"id":55816,"date":"2017-02-05T08:05:57","date_gmt":"2017-02-05T18:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=55816"},"modified":"2020-08-07T15:04:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-08T01:04:30","slug":"native-squid-and-its-bacterium-may-help-human-and-environmental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2017\/02\/05\/native-squid-and-its-bacterium-may-help-human-and-environmental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Native squid and its bacterium may help human and environmental health"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><div class=\"responsive-video-wrap\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"620\" height=\"349\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WMrkWFLy3So?showinfo=0\" title=\"Youtube video player\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>The humble Hawaiian bobtail squid is helping to build the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>&#8217;s capacity in the hot field of microbiome research. A microbiome is a community of microorganisms. Researchers at <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kewalo.hawaii.edu\/\">Kewalo Marine Laboratory<\/a> are studying the simple squid and its interactions with a single bioluminescent bacterium (<em>vibrio fisheri<\/em>) that grows inside of it to shed light on the incredibly more complex human microbiome.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We use the squid-vibrio system as a very simple model and the bacteria, this particular luminous bacterium that makes light for the squid associates with the animal cells in exactly the same way as our bacteria associate with our cells,&rdquo; explains <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbrc.hawaii.edu\/index.php\/margaret-mcfall-ngai\">Margaret McFall-Ngai<\/a><\/strong>, director of the <abbr>UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbrc.hawaii.edu\/\">Pacific Biosciences Research Center<\/a>. <\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_55846\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55846\" style=\"width: 260px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/manoa-pbrc-kewalo-lab.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/manoa-pbrc-kewalo-lab-260x146.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"260\" height=\"146\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-55846\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/manoa-pbrc-kewalo-lab-260x146.jpg 260w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/manoa-pbrc-kewalo-lab.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 260px) 100vw, 260px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-55846\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kewalo Marine Laboratory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Pacific Biosciences Research Center Researcher <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbrc.hawaii.edu\/index.php\/edward-ned-ruby\/item\/148\">Ned Ruby<\/a><\/strong> adds, &ldquo;And we hope that by understanding how it works in a simple model system like ours or like several others that are being studied out there, we&#8217;ll be able to understand how to maintain health of humans and how they maintain their beneficial associations.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Microbiome research is so important that the White House announced a National Microbiome Initiative in 2016 to understand, protect and restore healthy microbiome function, with specific implications for human health, environmental sustainability and energy and food production.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Related <abbr>UH<\/abbr> News story<\/strong>: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2016\/05\/26\/uh-manoa-partners-in-national-microbiome-initiative\/\"><abbr>UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa partners in National Microbiome Initiative<\/a><\/em>, May 26, 2016<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&ldquo;Not only is the diversity of the biosphere principally microbial, but the health of every single corner of the biosphere relies on the interactions that corner of the biosphere has with the microbial world,&rdquo; says McFall-Ngai. &ldquo;It&#8217;s huge and deep.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>With more than a dozen researchers, led by three members of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasonline.org\/?ref\">National Academy of Sciences<\/a>, including McFall-Ngai, <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> is a veritable microbiome powerhouse. McFall-Ngai says with the isolation and landscape of the Hawaiian Islands, the university is also uniquely positioned to study the interactions between environmental microbial communities and the human microbiome, and refers to it as &ldquo;total virgin frontier.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>As she sees it, with expertise across multiple disciplines, the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> is poised at the vanguard of environmental microbiome research.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212;By Kelli Trifonovitch<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hawaiian bobtail squid is helping build <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr>&#8217;s microbiome research capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":55832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,12],"tags":[1370,149,9,56],"class_list":["post-55816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-video","tag-hawaiian-bobtail-squid","tag-pacific-biosciences-research-center","tag-uh-manoa","tag-video-2","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/manoa-pbrc-microbiome-squid-f.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55816","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=55816"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124693,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55816\/revisions\/124693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}