👋 Hi Everyone, I’m a computational microbiologist studying how the get microbiome affects child development. I used to be an immunologist, and still dabble in that for research as well.
I write code primarily in the julia langage (though I can python and R a bit too), and I’m also into fermentation (shout-out to the fermentation community on this instance), gardening, rock climbing, and Zen Buddhism.
I’m part of the reddit exodus, looking forward to seeing more of the fediverse grow! If you’re a mastodon user, I’m also over there, though not nearly as active as I plan to be here (twitter was never my thing either).
Nice to have you around! The microbiome is a very intriguing topic. I am curious about how much we know today about the details. Would you say that as of 2023 we have a decent grasp of the kind of microorganisms that are present under different conditions and their effects, such that researchers are sorting out the details? Or are we still in the early exploration phase, with most of the basic questions still unanswered? I suspect it is the latter.
For Western adults, and to a slightly lesser degree children, I would say we have a pretty good grasp of what microorganisms tend to be present in healthy individuals, and some bugs that are associated with a lot of disease states, though we’re really only starting to see good evidence for causal links in a small handful of diseases like IBD.
There are major open questions about the microbiome in non-western populations, particularly in kids. We also don’t know why certain microbes are associated with certain diseases in most cases - there could be some casual links, but a lot of it is probably indirect.
We also don’t know much about how to intentionally shift the microbiome into new states - probiotics don’t really seem to stick around unless you’ve recently had a bunch of antibiotics for example.
So yeah, lots still to do 😀
Thank you! I will have to do a literature search soon to learn about the likely microbes in my body then. I am very curious.