A Note from Neeli: Penn State at the forefront of microbiome research
To the Penn State community,
A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit the One Health Microbiome Center at University Park. With over 540 members, 125 faculty and 160 graduate students from 42 departments across 10 colleges at Penn State, the center is one of the crown jewels of interdisciplinary excellence in our research enterprise. I had the chance to learn about the center’s innovative research from some of our amazing faculty members and students.
It was an exciting day at the center because the day before my visit, we received word that the One Health Microbiome Center won the WH Pierce Global Impact in Microbiology Prize from Applied Microbiology International. It’s the first time in the award’s 30-year history that the prize has been bestowed on a collaborative rather than an individual researcher.
You may think of the microbiome as the community of microorganisms that live in your gut. Or you might think of the bacteria and viruses that cause disease. But as I learned from Seth Bordenstein, Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck endowed chair in microbiome sciences in the Eberly College of Science and director of the One Health Microbiome Center, microbes are everywhere around us. Not only do they inhabit our bodies, but they teem in environments spanning plants, animals, soils, and oceans, and even our foods and homes. On my visit, I even got to see samples of microbes on our campus, from the fall foliage to the Nittany Lion mascot!
After my visit, I’ve been thinking about how microbiome science is fundamental to Penn State’s land-grant mission to enrich the quality of life for residents of the commonwealth and beyond. Microbes are the foundation of our ecosystems — agriculture, environment and human — and they flow between these three environments to shape health and disease risk within each system. For example, understanding animal health and environmental health helps us better understand and therefore develop 21st century solutions for enhancing human health.
Microbes do not exist in silos, and neither should research. Yet, among the more than 80 existing microbiome centers around the world, the One Health Microbiome Center is the first to bring together the diverse areas of microbiome science under one umbrella. It allows us to leverage faculty knowledge and research into interdisciplinary teams.
This approach is what sets the center apart — and why winning this award as the first collaborative is particularly meaningful. People in animal science, agriculture, biology, computer science, the arts — who are all working on similar questions and using microbiome science but who may not have interacted in the past — are now in conversation with one another. This type of leading-edge collaboration is critical for solving global issues such as antimicrobial resistance, emerging infectious disease, climate change and food insecurity. The microbiome market, including therapeutics, biotech and food, is expected to reach $300 billion by 2032, and our investment in this work is crucial. Our scholarship can help optimize and accelerate practical applications of microbiome science that have an innovative impact on human, agricultural and environmental health.
During my visit, several members of the center shared their exciting research:
- Jordan Bisanz, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, spoke about the interconnection between diet, drugs and the gut microbiome.
- Laura Weyrich, associate professor of anthropology and bioethics, shared her work on developing the first oral microbiome transplant to protect against cavities and periodontal disease.
- Francisco Dini-Andreote, assistant professor of phytobiomes, discussed how we can use microbiome science to enhance agricultural productivity and sustainability.
- Erika Ganda, assistant professor of food animal microbiomes, talked about how we can leverage the microbiome to improve food safety, animal health and productivity.
- Gui Becker, associate professor of biology, explained how climate change can disrupt relationships between microbes and host organisms like toadlets, influencing wildlife disease and biodiversity.
Not only are we leading scholarship and transforming what the microbiome science field looks like, we’re training the next generation of researchers, too.
Penn State is home to the first doctoral program in microbiome sciences in the world. I heard from Ashley Ohstrom, the first dual-title doctoral candidate in food science and microbiome sciences, about her research on sourdough microbiomes and her internship with QIAGEN, one of the center’s biotechnology industry partners. Sarah Bordenstein, associate research professor of biology, shared how her Wolbachia Project program, called Discover the Microbes Within!, engages middle- and high-school and college-age students in real-world research, teaching students laboratory skills such as DNA sequencing while contributing new data to the world as citizen scientists. Since moving to Penn State in summer of 2022, the Wolbachia Project has engaged more than 300 educators, including 23 partners at minority-serving institutions, representing more than 12,300 students.
The center deeply embodies my vision for growing interdisciplinary excellence, excellence that also transforms health care and enhances student success. It was phenomenal to see the resources, infrastructure and people that the center has assembled over the last decade, and largely made possible by the commitment of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences in partnership with the ten colleges. It’s a testament to the long-term strategic vision of leaders like Andrew Read, senior vice president for research, and Tracy Langkilde, interim executive vice president and provost, and Seth Bordenstein to bring together so many elements and to make this an epicenter of the field.
Thank you to the faculty, staff, postdocs, and students at the One Health Microbiome Center for welcoming me and sharing your work. And thank you for being a part of the Penn State community — your dedication inspires and energizes me every day.
We are!
Neeli