Dr. Knights presented a talk on "Identifying Dysbiosis: Complexities of Microbiome Diagnostics" at the 2014 Microbiome R&D Business Collaboration Forum in San Diego.
Abstract:
Given the complexity of the human microbiome and its links to a growing list of serious and prevalent diseases, the development of computational and experimental models that effectively characterize dysbiosis will advance medical research along numerous fronts. It is essential that we identify common underlying features across human microbiomes that explain the roles our gut microbiota play in modulating our health. We can in theory discover the mechanisms of pathogenesis in the microbiome if we collect the right data and analyze it with the right tools, but there are substantial computational and experimental challenges that need to be solved first. This presentation will introduce several major challenges in identifying and interpreting bacterial dysbiosis in human disease. The talk will then present contributions to solving several of these challenges using a tools from data mining and statistics.