Toward Personalized Control of Human Gut Bacterial Communities ABSTRACT A key challenge in microbiology will be developing tools for manipulating human gut bacterial communities. Our ability to predict and control the dynamics of these communities is now in its infancy.…
Congrats to Max on being nominated a rising star!
RISING STARS IN BIOMEDICAL This career development workshop aims to bring together top female and under-represented minority (URM) postdocs and senior graduate students whose research focuses on biomedical applications. The program includes technical talks, panels and discussions with faculty, researchers from Boston area clinical…
Our Microbes Are Starving, and That’s a Good Thing
A Duke and Harvard study of gut bacteria in many species finds that the modern human diet and overuse of antibiotics could tip the balance between host and microbe to the microbes’ favor. https://today.duke.edu/2018/10/our-microbes-are-starving-and-%E2%80%99s-good-thing
Congrats to Aspen Reese on her publication!
Antibiotic-induced changes in the microbiota disrupt redox dynamics in the gut How host and microbial factors combine to structure gut microbial communities remains incompletely understood. Redox potential is an important environmental feature affected by both host and microbial actions. We…
Congrats to Firas Midani on his publication!

Human Gut Microbiota Predicts Susceptibility to Vibrio cholerae Infection Cholera is a public health problem worldwide and the risk factors for infection are only partially understood. We found that machine learning models based on gut microbiota predicted V. cholerae infection as well as models…
Brianna Petrone joins the David Lab

Brianna Petrone Joins the David Lab! She’s a student in Duke’s MD-PhD program and joined the David lab for her PhD portion. She is interested in understanding the role of human microbiota in states of health and disease in order to…
Andrew Grover makes plans for after Duke

Congratulations to Andrew! Next year Andrew will be working at the NIH as part of the Postbac IRTA program. He will be working with Dr. Rebecca Brown investigating the endocrine implications of lipodystrophy (a condition in which the body cannot…
Zack wins NDSEG graduate fellowship

Congratulations to Zack, who has been selected as a 2017 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellow! He was one of ~150 chosen from ~3500 applications. This fellowship, funded by the US Department of Defense, lasts for four years and…
Season of Change
With the end of the 2017 academic year, the David lab said a fond farewell to several members as they graduated and hello to a few new shining faces. Apsen Reese became Dr. Reese as she finished her PhD in…
Congrats to Justin Silverman on his publication!

A phylogenetic transform enhances analysis of compositional microbiota data (PhILR) Surveys of microbial communities (microbiota), typically measured as relative abundance of species, have illustrated the importance of these communities in human health and disease. Yet, statistical artifacts commonly plague the…