Gut Check: Exploring your Microbiome

开始时间: 04/22/2022 持续时间: 6 weeks

所在平台: CourseraArchive 课程类别: 生物与生命科学 大学或机构: University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校） 授课老师： Rob Knight Jessica L. Metcalf Katherine R. Amato

课程主页: https://www.coursera.org/course/microbiome

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课程详情

The human body harbors up to ten times as many microbial cells as human cells. What are these microbes and what are they doing? How can we study them to find out? What do they tell us about ourselves? Just as our human genome records traces of who we are and the conditions we have adapted to during evolutionary history, our microbial genomes may record traces of what we have eaten, where we have lived, and who we have been in contact with. The microbial ecosystems in different parts of our bodies, which differ radically from one another, also supply a wide range of functions that affect many aspects of human health.

Join us on a guided tour of the human gut and its microscopic inhabitants. We will first review what microbes are and how they get into our bodies. We will then discuss the methods we use to study microbial communities and briefly explore how gut microbiome data are analyzed. This information will provide us with a foundation to explore current microbiome research. We will cover topics such as the influence of the gut microbiota on our nutrition, health and behavior. Did you know that gut microbes may influence how sick we get or the way we feel? The course will culminate with an in-depth review of the American Gut Project, the world's largest open-source, crowd-sourced science project, from how it works to what it’s taught us up until now.

课程大纲

Week 1: Introduction to microbes and the human microbiome

Meet Professor Rob Knight, Dr. Jessica Metcalf, and Dr. Katherine Amato as they introduce the human microbiome. Key topics this week are:

• What are microbes?

• The human microbiome

• Where do our microbes come from?

Week 2: How we study the microbiome

We will discuss the history of microbial research and review cutting-edge techniques used to examine microbial communities today. Key topics this week are:

• Challenges in microbiome research

• DNA-based analysis of microbial communities

• Additional tools for understanding what microbes are doing

Week 3: Making sense out of microbial data

We will briefly review techniques used for analyzing microbiome data. This information will serve as a foundation for exploring recent discoveries in microbiome research later on. Key topics this week are:

• Who is there? Taxonomy and how we assign it
  

• Describing how many kinds of microbes are in a community

• Comparing microbial communities between samples

Week 4: The human gut microbiome and your health

We will discuss major factors affecting the gut microbiome. We will also explore in detail what we currently know about diet, nutrition, health, and the gut microbiome. Key topics this week are:

• What influences your gut microbes?

• The gut microbiome and obesity

• Gut disease and fecal transplants

Week 5: Gut microbes and the rest of the body

We will talk about how the gut microbiome can affect your body outside of the gut, including interactions with the immune system and the brain. Key topics this week are:

• The gut microbiome and autoimmune disease

• The gut microbiome and behavior

• The post-mortem gut microbiome

Week 6: What’s in the American Gut?

We will re-introduce the American Gut Project and describe results both at an individual and a population level. Key topics this week are:

• What happens when you sign up for the American Gut Project?

• Interpreting American Gut results for a study participant

• Comparing the American Gut to other projects

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