In his UChicago lab, Asst. Prof. Sam Light (Microbiology, Metabolism) and his team study microbes by getting rid of the very gas that gives us life: oxygen. In a specialized chamber, they create an oxygen-free environment necessary to test microbes that live in our large intestines. Light and his team's work has implications in treating disease and enhancing health — from inflammatory bowel disease to Type II diabetes to liver disease.
We asked Light, the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Microbiology, and Ph.D. student Joyce Ghali, who works in the Light lab, what big questions does their lab investigate.
Light explains that they have specific disease-driven projects. Specifically, there's this specific microbiome dysfunction that has been shown to occur in a subset of patients with Type 2 diabetes. And it's been shown very convincingly that this exacerbates their disease. But exactly which microbes are responsible for that, and why, haven't been known. So we're trying to identify those microbes and dissect the process and how it relates to the diet.
PhD student Joyce Ghali shared that her project is focused on understanding the ecological factors that underlie the microbiome. She's interested in resource competition which explains how different bacteria interact with each other and compete for resources. The gut is a cutthroat environment, and she want to understand how bacteria are able to colonize and stably co-exist in the gut.
Read the full story Light Lab: Understanding the gut microbiome to treat disease by Emily Ayshford and watch the video from UChicago Creative