Decoding the Chemistry of the Microbiome
Scientists zoom in on microbial messages at the molecular level to understand how the microbiome shapes health
Each human body is home to trillions of microbes, whose combined cells may outnumber human cells. There’s no question that these microbiomes — the ecosystems of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes residing on and inside us — shape our health. But how, exactly, do they do it?
It’s a question that captivated Sloan Devlin when she was a young researcher fresh out of a PhD program in organic chemistry. It was the early 2010s, and Devlin had seen the many studies and headlines linking the microbiome with everything from autoimmune diseases to antibiotic resistance, metabolism, and even mood. But research explaining why those links existed seemed vanishingly sparse. That knowledge gap didn’t faze the budding scientist; instead, she says, it “seemed like a breath of fresh air.” She’d been searching for a way to put her chemistry knowledge to use to tackle big, unanswered questions in biology.