Project 172994

Within a healthy human body, there exist many microbial communities that play critical roles in our body's state of health and disease. For example, disruptions to the microbial ecosystem of the vagina can result in profound consequences to women, including enhanced acquisition of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, early pregnancy loss, and localized infections that significantly impact quality of life. To understand the vaginal microbes and how they can modulate women's health and diseases, we need to identify and characterize microbes involved in these processes. Traditionally, identification of microbes from the human body fluid is performed by various laboratory tests which lack both accuracy and sensitivity. Today, with the advance of new DNA sequencing technologies in biomedical research, this can be achieved by genome-wide approaches such as the metagenomic techniques, which allows analysis of genetic materials derived from complete microbial communities harvested from their natural environments. In this study, we propose to use one of the new DNA sequencing technologies, pyrosequencing, that we have developed in recent years, to tackle the identities of individual microbes in the woman's genital tract. We will collect vaginal samples from healthy women and perform analysis of these samples by pyrosequencing and bioinformatics tools. We will be able to examine and identify comprehensively the microorganisms living in the female genital tract with great accuracy. The data collected from this project will no doubt help us to identify and characterize microbes that are related to women's health and provide us information to develop potentially new treatments and therapies that can be either preventive or reactive to women's diseases.