The goal of the Rakoff-Nahoum lab is a comprehensive understanding of the host-associated microbiota at various levels of biological organization: from genes to molecules to organisms to ecosystems, and importantly, the determination of cause and effect. To achieve this, we couple empirical approaches with ecological and evolutionary frameworks. We use the tools of classic bacterial genetics of gut anaerobes including the cultivation, random and directed mutagenesis of individual members of the mammalian microbiota (Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria), in vitro and in vivo experimental systems to study the adaptation of gut bacteria to the environment (such as using TnSeq), mouse gnotobiotics, computational approaches to microbiome ecology, and high throughput in vitro pipelines for the cultivation, genetic, chemical and phenotypic analysis of the effects of members of the microbiota on each other and the host.
Research topics include microbiome, microbial ecology and evolution, microbial physiology and metabolism, microbiome-host interactions, immunology, glycobiology, pediatric, microbiome in stem cell transplant, and pediatric microbiome in food allergy.
To learn more, please visit the Rakoff-Nahoum Lab.
