Dan Knights: How we study the microbes living in your gut
丹奈 . 特斯: 我們如何研究住在腸道內的微生物?
Dan Knights develops computational methods for doing precision medicine with gut bacterial communities, or microbiomes, and he applies those methods to study human disease. Full bio
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that's living in your gut,
住在你腸道中的微生物,
It's the best-known of the gut microbes.
它是最多人知道的腸道微生物。
is outnumbered in your gut
腸道菌的千分之一,
you probably haven't heard of.
數量較多的菌種。
Prevotella is another example.
the modern human gut.
microbes living inside you.
living inside you --
if you took a blade of grass
腸道內的每一個微生物,
living in your gut,
to life in modern society,
適應現代社會的生活,
related to the gut
in developed nations all around the world.
someone who suffers from obesity,
有下列狀況的人:肥胖、
or ulcerative colitis,
and autoimmunity
及自體免疫相關的疾病
of healthy diversity in the gut.
健康多樣性的細菌有關。
non-human primates.
研究非人類的靈長類。
to a monkey's microbiome
從叢林搬到動物園之後,
牠們有得到新的菌種嗎?
Do they pick up new bugs?
Does it get better or worse?
這樣是好或不好?
species in the jungle,
the DNA from their stool.
取得 DNA 來做定序。
in my research lab.
就是這樣研究微生物群系的。
is that in the wild,
微生物群組完全不同。
totally different sets of microbes.
most of that diversity
牠們的多樣性卻少了大半,
some other set of microbes.
tropical rainforest
that we're talking about.
牠們就失去了多樣性。
that's been burned to the ground
in a captive primate.
靈長類的微生物群系。
are not doing so well.
狀況沒有很好。
holding onto their lives.
very interested to find out
that are taking over in the zoo.
入侵菌種到底是什麼。
and what the DNA told us
而 DNA 告訴我們
by Bacteroides and Prevotella,
in our guts as modern humans.
也都有同樣的這些微生物。
from multivariate ecology
多變量生態學的工具,
we were studying onto an axis.
微生物群系放到一個軸上。
is a distance plot
is a different animal's microbiome.
不同動物的微生物群系。
a whole zoo of microbes.
整個動物園的微生物。
that have a lot of microbes in common
are farther apart.
are over on the left.
highly endangered monkeys
are monkeys from Costa Rica.
totally different microbiomes in the wild.
有著迥然不同的微生物群系。
of monkey in the zoo are converging,
在放入動物園後卻變得很相似,
much more similar to each other,
on different continents,
位在不同的大陸,
and they're eating different diets.
牠們還吃不同的食物。
some other species of primate.
do you think is even more divergent
差異性更大?
than the captive primates?
living in developing nations.
from the wild primates
all the way on the right,
在圖的最右邊,
on the back of my neck,
"Oh, that's interesting,
「喔,好有趣,
to becoming like Americans."
變得和美國人一樣了。」
are like super-captive monkeys.
at this figure on my computer screen
看著這張圖時,
that four of the red-shanked doucs
動物園中有四隻白臀葉猴
living inside them
to the human part of the story.
關於人類的部分了。
as frequently as in the zoo,
並沒有動物園中那麼頻繁,
of obesity, diabetes,
可能會產生肥胖、糖尿病,
who have been living in the USA
and refugee groups,
新陳代謝是很健康的,
for obesity and diabetes
this issue with two groups
from Southeast Asia:
in the mid-1970s
and the US secret war in Laos;
難民身分來到美國;
more recently as refugees from Myanmar.
才以緬甸難民的身份到美國。
communities and clinicians
to the Hmong and Karen microbiomes
和泰國的村落搬到美國之後,
and villages in Thailand to the USA.
come to the USA from these groups,
of their microbiome,
and become obese
a dramatic change in your microbiome,
actually causing the obesity,
a change in the microbes?
that we're following up on,
所發現的證據彙整後,
from a number of labs around the world
in the microbiome
kind of Westernized diseases.
your microbiome can actually change.
可以被改變。
of research happening right now
微生物群系發生問題時,
how we can restore our microbiomes
from healthy people around the world
全世界健康人類的微生物,
as cultural assets for those groups
而予保存下來,
as they adapt to modern society,
提供所需的保護,
to have increased risk of these diseases
得到這些疾病的風險越來越高,
to restore and replenish our microbiomes,
來恢復和補充我們的微生物群系,
will live happier and healthier lives,
比較快樂、健康的生活,
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dan Knights - Computational microbiologistDan Knights develops computational methods for doing precision medicine with gut bacterial communities, or microbiomes, and he applies those methods to study human disease.
Why you should listen
Trillions of bacteria live in our guts, protecting us from infection and aiding our digestion, yet these communities are so complex that we need advanced computational methods to study them. In his multidisciplinary research lab, Dan Knights combines expertise in data mining and biology to learn about how modern lifestyles and medical practices are affecting our microbiomes and leading to increases in modern diseases.
Knights received his PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. He has co-authored more than 70 highly cited articles in top multidisciplinary journals. In 2015 he was named a McKnight Land-Grant Professor by the University of Minnesota. His lab is building a next-generation informatics pipeline for microbiome-targeted drug discovery, linking nutrition and microbial activity to clinical outcomes.
Dan Knights | Speaker | TED.com