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.