Project title
Biodiversity and microbiota: a novel pathway to allergy and asthma prevention
Collaborators and funding
Research Centre for Hauora and Health, Massey University, NZ; HRC funded (23/086)
Contact(s)
- Steven Taylor, Flinders University, steven.taylor@flinders.edu.au
Project description and aims
AIM: To relate the environmental microbiome (indoor and outdoor) to asthma and allergy risk in children at high risk. To relate the human microbiome (stool, nasal, skin) microbiome to asthma and allergy risk in children at high risk.
IMPACT: This may explain epidemiological associations linking particular urban environments to asthma and allergy, and identify microbial factors that can modify this effect.
Planned analyses: Shotgun metagenomic sequencing will be performed on environmental samples (floor dust, doormats, soil) and host samples (skin swab, nasal swab, stool) from 150 children across 2 timepoints living across diverse settings (defined by level of surrounding biodiversity). microbiota characteristics will be compared between samples, within individuals, as well as between individuals and related to environmental biodiversity, demographics, living conditions (e.g. pets), and asthma and allergy.
How is ABLeS supporting this work?
This work is supported through the Production Bioinformatics scheme provided by ABLeS. The support includes storage and compute allocation.
Expected outputs enabled by participation in ABLeS
Expect to published these findings in Q1 asthma/allergy journals (e.g. JACI, Allergy, Thorax)
These details have been provided by project members at project initiation. For more information on the project, please consult the contact(s) or project links above.