Tools for Quantitative Spatial Analysis of Mucosal Gut Microbiota in IBD.

Microbial communities living on the surfaces of the mammalian intestinal tract likely play a role in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), but this role is not yet fully understood. We will develop two innovative technologies that will help researchers visualize and quantify which microbes live on intestinal surfaces, where these microbes are located relative to each other and relative to the mammalian cells, how these microbial communities change in response to inflammation, and which of these microbial communities likely cause inflammation or protect from it. This work is an interdisciplinary collaboration among junior researchers Jacob Barlow, Octavio Mondragón-Palomino and Roberta Poceviciute at the California Institute of Technology.