Human health is intimately connected with the tens of trillions of bacteria, fungi and viruses that live symbiotically in and on our bodies. Our microbiota is a remarkable consortium of microbes, unique to each person, and is constantly evolving and adapting. Gut microbes produce compounds that are directly absorbed into our blood, both nourishing us and affecting human functions as diverse as digestion, immunity, and neurodegeneration. The gut microbiota is also malleable, making this ecosystem an enticing target for precision medicine. To date, there have been few direct applications of microbiota therapies in the clinic, due to the lack of understanding of the mechanisms connecting these microbial communities to human health. More than 20 million Canadians suffer every year from digestive disorders that implicate the gut microbiota: it is imperative that we translate what is learned in the lab, and apply it to the clinic.

In the Tropini lab, we are investigating how a disrupted physical environment in diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and chronic diarrhea affect the microbiota and host at a multi-scale level. We are a cross-disciplinary group that incorporates techniques from microbiology, bioengineering, biophysics and more to create highly parallel assays and study how bacteria and communities function, with the eventual goal of translating the knowledge we gain to improve human health.