The role and impact of the microbiome and virome in health and disease

From Valdes et al, Anat. Rec. 2022

My team is working on different collaborative research projects with the objective of better understanding the role and impact of the microbiome and virome in health and disease.

We have ongoing projects on the vaginal microbiome and its role in preterm birth and issues resulting from the use of a pessary.

We also work with other groups to study the role of the mouse intestinal microbiome in inflammation and colitis, using specific knock-out mouse models.

Finally, we are developing tools to study the role and impact of the virome (mainly bacteriophages in our case) in the above study models.

Our research methodology involves 16S rDNA gene sequencing (Illumina MiSeq; V4 region) and phylogenetic analysis, as well as whole metagenomics to characterize the virome (Illumina NextSeq 550). Some of our tools include Qiime2, FastViromeExplorer, MetaQuast, PHASTER, MetaPhage, and PhageTerm, to name a few.