Doctoral Dissertation Research: Dysbiosis, Health, and Therapeutics in Global Microbiome Science

在21世纪，将微生物理解为生态系统的基因组学方法产生了微生物组的概念，该术语指的是特定环境中微生物和/或微生物基因组的组合。通常，这种环境就是人体本身，这些研究人类相关微生物的新方法使人们对微生物对人类健康的重要性有了新的认识。这项研究考察了这些变化如何改变人们对现代生活如何影响人类健康的看法。它调查了微生物组科学的新兴领域如何定义健康和不健康的人类微生物组，以及这些定义中的潜在风险和假设。它的目的是在个人和全球层面上对卫生进行更合乎道德和更公平的干预，它将提供关于微生物组倡议如何能够更公平地造福历史上一直受到提取性研究实践影响的群体的经验数据。通过出版物和教育演讲，这项研究旨在改变科学家及其政府、教育和工业客户使用微生物组的方式，以了解和干预不断变化的现代环境与人体之间的关系。该研究将采用人种学实地考察，重点关注全球微生物组收集项目和大波士顿/剑桥地区微生物治疗学的发展。在此过程中，它提出了这样的问题：微生物疗法的发展如何改变当代对健康的理解？人类微生物群如何被指定为健康或不健康，治疗干预在这些指定中的作用是什么？初步结果表明，高微生物多样性正预示着一种新的人类健康，一种既与健康的环境有关，又与理想的前现代环境有关的健康。因此，从本研究中产生的论文将研究微生物组科学中现代性、环境和健康身体的构建，以便理论化人为环境变化对人类健康和生活质量的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In the 21st century, genomic methods of understanding microbes as ecosystems have generated the concept of the microbiome, a term that refers to the combined microorganisms and/or microbial genomes within a given environment. Often, that environment is the human body itself, and these new methods for studying human-associated microbes have resulted in new understandings of microbes’ importance to human health. This study examines how these shifts are changing ideas about how modern life affects human health. It investigates how the emerging field of microbiome science defines healthy and unhealthy human microbiomes, as well as underlying stakes and assumptions in these definitions. Aimed at more ethical and equitable interventions in health at both an individual and a global level, it will contribute empirical data on how microbiome initiatives can more equitably benefit groups that have been historically subjected to extractive research practices. Through publications and educational presentations, this research aims to change the ways that scientists and their clients in government, education, and industry use the microbiome to understand and intervene in the relationships between changing modern environments and human bodies.The study will employ ethnographic fieldwork focusing on global microbiome collection projects and the development of microbial therapeutics in the greater Boston/Cambridge area. In doing so, it asks: How is the development of microbial therapeutics changing contemporary understandings of health? How are human microbiomes designated healthy or unhealthy, and what is the role of therapeutic interventions in making these designations? Preliminary results suggest that high microbial biodiversity is coming to signify a new kind of human health, one associated with both a healthy environment and an idealized premodern relationship to it. The dissertation that emerges from this research will therefore examine the construction of modernity, environment, and the healthy body in microbiome science in order to theorize the effects of anthropogenic environmental change on approaches to human health and quality of life.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.