7 ways The BioCollective Will Accelerate Microbiome Research and Change Medicine

7 ways The BioCollective Will Accelerate Microbiome Research and Change Medicine

The BioCollective – transforming and accelerating microbiome research and novel therapies – while saving our human microbiome diversity and maybe you. Your poop is more than just waste. If you think that microbiome research has changed medicine – you ain’t seen nothing yet. The BioCollective (TBC) is transforming citizen science microbiome research from sample collection to the potential for providing a return on your initial “deposit”. TBC is building a microbiome data and sample repository to help scientists accelerate their research and development of potential therapeutics. TBC’s unique approach to microbiome citizen science research is due to the perfect trinity of collaborators: Martha Carlin, Jack Gilbert, PhD, and Suzanne Vernon, PhD. TBC is the brainchild of self-trained citizen scientist Martha Carlin, a former systems analyst who “turned around” struggling companies. Martha realized that for microbiome research to aid or even cure microbiome-related diseases, a new, integrative, multi-pronged approach was needed and a wider diversity of people should be sampled. The BioCollective provides solutions to many of the current issues with human microbiome research. A clean poop sample TBC Member issue: People are often totally “icked” out and may have trouble collecting high quality sample. Researcher issue: TBC Members have difficulty

Martha Carlin: A Visionary Citizen Scientist Changing Microbiome and Medical Research

Martha Carlin: A Visionary Citizen Scientist Changing Microbiome and Medical Research

Self-trained citizen scientist, Martha Carlin, founds The BioCollective to accelerate microbiome research and therapies. “Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson His vacant stare told Martha Carlin something was wrong with her 44-year-old husband. Many doctor’s visits later, the diagnosis – Parkinson’s Disease. A systems analyst and expert in turning around companies, Martha Carlin was determined to turn around the doctor’s prognosis that Parkinson’s would kill her husband. So for the next 15 years, she began pouring her energy, time, and disposable income into becoming a self-trained scientist. Starting with one of Michael J. Fox’s book, Martha read hundreds of books about nutrition, disease, and immunology. With the help of a childhood friend who was a college librarian and Googling for unfamiliar terms, Martha read scientific journal articles. Slowly she put together a mind map of different potential genetic and environmental influences that might have led to her husband’s Parkinson’s disease. During Parkinson’s Disease, brain cells stop producing the chemical messages that allow for coordinated movement. Patients gradually lose control of their muscles. As she interviewed Parkinson’s patients, Martha noticed that many had frequently used antibiotics, had chronic strep

The Game PATHOGENESIS: A Fabulous Way to Teach Immunology

The Game PATHOGENESIS: A Fabulous Way to Teach Immunology

The game PATHOGENESIS is an excellent deck building game for teaching human-pathogen interactions.   Games are such a fun, active-learning way to teach science and science concepts! The game PATHOGENESIS is an incredible new addition to any game closet from community center and classroom to home.  It’s strategic and interesting while being scientifically accurate. I’m so in awe of how much thought and care clearly went into the concept, development, and design of the game PATHOGENESIS to create something fun, but educational. It’s obvious that one of the co-designers teaches immunology at a community college. PATHOGENESIS teaches how our three-tiered immune system works to defeat bacterial pathogens. You are the pathogens trying to invade the human body and defeat one of three different body areas: respiratory, gut, or tissue. You build a hand of pathogens with different abilities and attack the body site(s) each turn. As you attack, you gain damage tokens with the winner being the person who collects the most damage tokens when a body site(s) is defeated.

The Vaginal Microbiome During Pregnancy – At Least Something is Stable!

The Vaginal Microbiome During Pregnancy – At Least Something is Stable!

The vaginal microbiome during pregnancy is more stable than that of non-pregnant women. Women delivering at full-term gestation had a Lactobacillus dominant vaginal microbiome. Pregnancy is a human-body changer. Ask any woman who’s gone through it. My hair went from light blonde to this mousy blonde after my first trimester with my first baby, Jac. Never mind that baby belly I don’t think I’ll ever lose. That pooch is part of me now. Though I have to say, pregnancy was the one time in my life where my allergies and eczema weren’t a problem. So what about your microbial self? Your microbiome? Do all body sites have a more or less stable microbiome during pregnancy? Or do some body sites, like gut or vaginal microbiomes, change during pregnancy? Since birth seems to be the primary time that microbes are passed from mother to offspring, perhaps the vaginal microbiome would change as birth approaches. Vaginal Community State Types The Ravel lab sampled the vaginal fluid microbiome community throughout the pregnancy of 22 women who delivered babies at term [1]. The vaginal fluid microbiome of pregnant and non-pregnant women was compared. What the researchers found was that the vaginal bacterial communities of both pregnant and

4 Microbiome Educational Activities for the Classroom

4 Microbiome Educational Activities for the Classroom

Four different activities help educators from K-12 and undergraduate teach students about the importance of the human microbiome. Want to teach about the importance of the human microbiome, but don’t really know where to start? The ASM education blog released a post – Bring the Magic of the Microbiome to Your Classroom – pulling together four of the microbiome exercises that have been published in JMBE recently. Take a look at these different classroom microbiome activities. I especially, love that there’s one – Microbe Motels – for K-8 and am looking forward to trying it out! Check out the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education (JMBE) published by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). JMBE is the educational journal of the society and features excellent classroom activities. It’s open access and even FREE for members to publish in! WIN WIN!