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You are not 100% human!

Even when you think you are alone, your “micro-mates” are very much with you. The human body is home to trillions of microbes, and their collective genes, pathways, and metabolites add an enormous layer of biological potential beyond our own genome. Thanks to next-generation sequencing and multi-omics technologies, we can now explore this hidden yet highly interactive microbial world with unprecedented resolution.

At our lab, we study how the human microbiome is associated with human traits, disease risk, disease progression, and treatment response. We focus on diseases and conditions in which the microbiome may provide a new layer of biological and clinical information, including gastrointestinal cancers, metabolic disorders, and aging-related phenotypes.

We search for microbial biomarkers and potential therapeutic effectors, including specific bacteria, microbial genes, functional pathways, and microbiota-derived metabolites. These microbial signatures may serve as early warning signs, mechanistic clues, or actionable targets for disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

At our laboratory, we aim to:

1. Identify disease- and health-associated microbes, their genes & functional pathways, and metabolites.

2. Develop statistical algorithms and analytical strategies for microbiome data, which are heterogeneous, dynamic, non-normal, and zero-inflated.

3. Integrate multiple layers of data—microbial abundance, metagenome, metabolome, host clinical data, host transcriptome—to translate microbiome knowledge into medical applications, including biomarker-based diagnosis, microbe- and metabolite-informed therapeutics, and precision medicine strategies tailored to each individual.

Our health is not written only in our own genes. 

Sometimes, the most useful clues come from the tiny companions!