Rob Knight

TL;DR: Results support the emerging view that the gut microbiota contributes to metabolic disease and suggest that malfunction of the innate immune system may promote the development of metabolic syndrome.

TL;DR: A meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project is presented, creating both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth’s microbial diversity.

TL;DR: Low-error sequencing data suggest that initial microbial colonizers of infant guts could persist over the life span of an individual, and members of Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria are significantly more stable components than the population average.

TL;DR: The value of characterizing vertebrate gut microbiomes to understand host evolutionary histories at a supraorganismal level is illustrated by shotgun sequencing of microbial community DNA and targeted sequencing of bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA genes.

TL;DR: It is indicated that host-microbial interactions that impact host metabolism can occur and may be beneficial in pregnancy and when transferred to germ-free mice, T3 microbiota induced greater adiposity and insulin insensitivity compared to T1.