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29
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Introduction
I am a microbiome and nutrition researcher. Topics I research include the gut microbiome, transcriptomics, nutrition and dietetics, nutritional biochemistry and gastroenterology. I've also published about the role the gut microbiota plays in mitochondrial biogenesis, energy production and redox balance during endurance exercise and am working on investigating the role the gut microbiome plays in colitis associated colorectal cancer.
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Publications
Publications (29)
Endurance athletes offer unique physiology and metabolism compared to sedentary individuals. Athletes training at high intensities for prolonged periods are at risk for gastrointestinal disturbances. An important factor in endurance performance is the integrity and function of the gut barrier, which primarily depends on heavily O-glycosylated mucin...
We simultaneously measured the fecal microbiota and multiple environmental and host-related variables in a cohort of 185 healthy horses reared in similar conditions during a period of eight months. The pattern of rare bacteria varied from host to host and was largely different between two time points. Among a suite of variables examined, equitation...
Background:
The remission of Crohn's disease (CD) can be accomplished by faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). However, this procedure has a low success rate, which could be attributed to mis-communication between recipient intestinal mucosa and donor microbiota.
Methods:
Here we used a human explant tissue model and an in vivo mouse model to...
Understanding gut microbiota similarities and differences across breeds in horses has the potential to advance approaches aimed at personalized microbial modifications, particularly those involved in improving sport athletic performance. Here, we explore whether faecal microbiota composition based on faecal 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing varies...
An integrated analysis of gut microbiota, blood biochemical and metabolome in 52 endurance horses was performed. Clustering by gut microbiota revealed the existence of two communities mainly driven by diet as host properties showed little effect. Community 1 presented lower richness and diversity, but higher dominance and rarity of species, includi...
Cirrhosis severity in patients was previously shown to be associated with progressive changes in the fecal microbiome in a longitudinal setting. Recent evidence shows that bacterial translocation from the gut to the extraintestinal sites could play a major role in poor disease outcome and patient survival. However, the underlying mechanisms involvi...
Genetic kinship between the 20 Welsh ponies in the experiment. (A) Dot plot of the historical egg counts (eggs/g feces) in each of the susceptible (S) and resistant (R) animals included in the study since 2011; (B) Density plot of historical fecal egg counts values in S and R animals. In all cases, S individuals are indicated in purple color and R...
Animal performance between susceptible and resistant animals across time. (A) Boxplot and violin plot representation of body weight (kg) between susceptible (S) and resistant (R) ponies across time; (B) Boxplot and violin plot representation of average daily gain (kg) between S and R ponies across time. In all cases, S animals were colored in purpl...
Biochemical data in susceptible and resistant animals across time. Levels of albumin (A), cholesterol (B), globins (C), glucose (D), alkaline phosphatase (E), ratio albumin/goblins (F), total proteins (G) and urea (H) in susceptible (S, purple boxes) and resistant animals (R green boxes) were plotted. Boxes show median and interquartile range, and...
Co-occurrence genera network at 92 days after the entry to the pasture for susceptible and resistant ponies. The correlations among genera were calculated using the PCIT method, which identifies significant co-occurrence patterns. The size of the node is proportional to genera abundance. Node fill color corresponds to phylum taxonomic classificatio...
Summary of study samples and fecal bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequence datasets.
Differences in predicted KEGG pathway abundance between susceptible (S) and resistant (R) animals across time. Predicted pathways values across time are represented as %, where normalized counts from a particular pathway is divides by the total number of counts in each sample.
Overview of the data analysis in the study. Effect of parasite susceptibility on gut microbiota composition, gut-related parameters and host variables across time.
Step 1: Measurement of the gut microbiota composition between susceptible (S) and resistant (R) ponies across time. This step involved the analysis of the α-diversity and β-diversity bet...
Weather and pasture quality throughout the experiment. (A) Daily precipitation and temperatures recorded at a meteorological station located 14 km from the experimental pasture. Maximum and minimum daily temperatures are colored in red and blue, respectively. Dashed line represents precipitation; (B) Chemical composition (crude protein (CP), neutra...
Estimation of β-diversity indexes from genera table in susceptible and resistant animals across the experiment. (A) Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) of Bray Curtis distances to compare fecal communities at the level of genera that differ between susceptible (S) and resistant (R) animals across the experiment. Microbial communities were no...
Top 20 most abundant genera in susceptible and resistant animals across time. Area plot representation of the 20 most abundant genera in feces of susceptible (S) and resistant (R) animals across time. In each plot, the non-colored space represents the total proportion of the minor genera grouped together.
The OTU taxonomical assignments and OTU counts in each pony across time.
Differences in relative abundance of genera between susceptible (S) and resistant (R) animals across time.
Topological properties of co-occurring networks obtained from susceptible and resistant animals at day 92 of the experiment.
Hemogram data in susceptible and resistant animals across time. The evaluation of the hemogram involved the determination of the hematocrit, total white blood cell counts, total erythrocyte count, erythrocyte indices and platelet counts. The determination of the total white blood cells (A) was performed between S (purple boxes) and R (green boxes)...
Estimation of α-diversity indexes (observed species richness, Chao1 and Shannon) from the OTU table between time points. Estimation of the α-diversity indexes across the experiment. The box color indicates the time point analyzed: (dark blue = 0 days, cyan = 24 days, pink = 43 days, green = 92 days, and yellow = 132 days). A Dunn test was performed...
Gastrointestinal strongyles are a major threat to horses' health and welfare. Given that strongyles inhabit the same niche as the gut microbiota, they may interact with each other. These beneficial or detrimental interactions are unknown in horses and could partly explain contrasted susceptibility to infection between individuals. To address these...
Gastrointestinal strongyles are a major threat to horses' health and welfare. Given that strongyles inhabit the same niche as the gut microbiota, they may interact with each other. These beneficial or detrimental interactions are unknown in horses and could partly explain contrasted susceptibility to infection between individuals. To address these...
Little is known about how micronutrient deficiencies affect the human gut microbiota. A study by Hibberd et al. illustrates how these deficiencies affect the composition and function of gut microbiota, and further, how different species realize changes in gene expression and cellular metabolism to cope with micronutrient shortages.
Many physiological changes occur in response to endurance exercise in order to adapt to the increasing energy needs, mitochondria biogenesis, increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and acute inflammatory responses. Mitochondria are organelles within each cell that are crucial for ATP production and are also a major producer of ROS and r...
Background
Endurance exercise in horses requires adaptive processes involving physiological, biochemical, and cognitive-behavioral responses in an attempt to regain homeostasis. We hypothesized that the identification of the relationships between blood metabolome, transcriptome, and miRNome during endurance exercise in horses could provide signific...
Many physiological changes occur in response to endurance exercise in order to adapt to the increasing energy needs, mitochondria biogenesis, increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and acute inflammatory responses. Mitochondria are organelles within each cell that are crucial for ATP production and are also a major producer of ROS and r...
Fatigue, mood disturbances, under performance and gastrointestinal distress are common among athletes during training and competition. The psychosocial and physical demands during intense exercise can initiate a stress response activating the sympathetic-adrenomedullary and hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axes, resulting in the release of stre...
The hygiene hypothesis postulates that higher levels of cleanliness and improper exposure to microorganisms early in childhood could disturb the intestinal microbiome resulting in abnormal immune responses. Recently, more attention has been put on how a lack of sun exposure and consequently vitamin D deficiency could lead to less immune tolerance a...
