Where Microbiome Research Is Headed: My Latest for NPR

There has been a flourish of new studies linking the human microbiome to a host of diseases–Parkinson’s, diabetes, and even depression.

But that is not enough for biologist Rob Knight.

Knight is one of the co-founders of the American Gut Project, a citizen-funded effort to better understand the microbiome’s connection to health. He recently moved to University of California, San Diego, and I caught up with him for a chat for NPR.

Read the full interview here.

“Right now a lot of microbiome research is about pattern discovery,” Knight says.

“In the future it’s going to move beyond the correlations to actually finding out which of those conditions microbes cause–and which of those conditions we can either predict or modify with improved knowledge about the microbial world,” he says. Read the rest here.

And read about the time I had my–and my family’s–poo sequenced for science here.