Imagine yourself as the head of a funding agency (like the National Institute of Health) in which your job is to look at proposals for research projects and decide what projects to award funding to. Based on your readings this term, discuss a research project (or projects) that you would be most excited about funding as they relate to learning more about microbial influences on human health. As part of your response, consider what are we likely to learn from the project and how that might be important in future healthcare decisions.

For my research project that I would fund, I would like to investigate more into the brain-gut axis and how it would affect various neurological disorders. From this project, we will be able to learn more about the interactions of microbes that eventually lead or have connections to diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. This is important to learn as neurological diseases have been on a rise in our society. New research has found various links between microbes and the human brain. But, there is little research done about it. We might learn more about those connections and further our understanding as to how these diseases might arise. This will be important in the future for healthcare decisions when proceeding with experimental procedures or even with medications. It could show how a certain microbe affects the nervous system overall.

Part 1: Set a timer for 3 minutes, and make a list of as many human non-infectious diseases that you can think of that are influenced by microorganisms.

Part 2: Refer back to your Writing Exercise #1 that you completed the first week of class. Reflect and discuss how your responses have changed from week 1 to week 10, and what the most important topics you will take away with you once you have completed the course.

1:

• cancer
• diabetes
• anxiety
• obesity
• asthma
• allergic diseases
• immunodefieciency disease

2:

Compared to my week one work, I believe that I have now a deeper understanding as to what exactly is a non-infectious disease and how microbes are a big influence on the onset of non-infectious diseases. Looking back at the first week, I think that I heavily relied on others’ information rather than my own knowledge. Now after taking this class, I have more knowledge about various topics concerning health and non-infectious diseases.

The main takeaway that I will take with me after finishing this course is that microbes, if manipulated, can affect and bring up various diseases in the human body. I found it quite fascinating how there is a brain-gut axis that affects neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s. Just the knowledge that I gained from knowing that microbes are much more than just simple organisms in our body has been amazing. For example, reading about how the manipulation of microbes in germ-free and non-germ-free mice leads to the increase of diseases in the subject has made me realize that the microbiome in our bodies is a widely unexplored and interesting area of study.