Doctoral Dissertation Research: Dietary and sociocultural change and the human oral microbiome

古代微生物组研究这一新兴领域为理解过去几千年来农业和社会组织在塑造人类口腔微生物组中的作用提供了重要的基线数据。然而，需要额外的过渡性历史数据来增强我们对口腔微生物生态如何响应过去125年来最近的社会文化变化的理解。本论文项目将研究1890年至今人类口腔微生物组的变化，以了解口腔微生物组的近期演变和多样性，以及社会文化对微生物组结构和功能的影响。该项目将支持对学生的培训和指导，包括那些来自STEM研究中代表性不足的群体的学生，也可能为临床微生物组研究提供信息。研究成果将通过同行评议的出版物和报告在各学科间分享，并通过参与的自然历史博物馆向公众传播。通过干湿实验方法，我们的研究目标是：1)描述20世纪早期不同美国人的口腔微生物群特征；2)调查微生物群落的生态变化及其代谢功能。为了实现这些目标，牙结石（牙石）将从地理和种族不同的美国人收集，这些人被安置在自然历史、骨骼收藏和居住在纽约大都会地区的生活人口中。通过散弹枪测序恢复的微生物DNA将用于重建口腔微生物组的分类和功能多样性。为现代微生物组提供这一历史背景将有助于我们理解微生物组生态学、现代人类健康和疾病。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。

The emerging field of ancient microbiome research is providing crucial baseline data for understanding the role of agriculture and social organization in shaping the human oral microbiome over the past several thousand years. However, additional transitional historical data are needed to enhance our understanding of how oral microbial ecology has responded to recent sociocultural change in the last 125 years. This dissertation project will investigate changes in the human oral microbiome from 1890 to the modern day, to provide insights into recent evolution and diversity of the oral microbiome, and sociocultural influences on microbiome structure and function. The project will support training and mentoring of students, including those from groups underrepresented in STEM research, and may also inform clinical microbiome research. Research findings will be shared across disciplines through peer-reviewed publications and presentations, and communicated to the public through outreach at participating natural history museums. Through both wet and dry laboratory methods, our research objectives are to 1) characterize the oral microbiome of diverse early 20th century Americans and 2) investigate ecological changes in microbial communities and their metabolic functions over time. To achieve these objectives, dental calculus (tartar) will be collected from geographically and ethnically diverse Americans housed in natural history skeletal collections and living populations residing in the NY metropolitan area. Microbial DNA recovered through shotgun sequencing will be used to reconstruct taxonomic and functional diversity of the oral microbiome. Providing this historical context to the modern microbiome will contribute to our understanding of microbiome ecology, human health and disease in the modern era.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.