The most fascinating thing for me so far has been the link between obesity and gut microbiome. Many people all over the world struggle with body image and dieting is one of the hardest subjects to find consistent information on. There are always fad diets and other things which just serve to confuse. I would like to further my understanding of obesity and how it can be attenuated through microbial means. I also enjoy the difficulties that are associated with studying the human microbiome and its interaction. The fact that it is so difficult to establish if the microbes are there as a cause or effect is so fascinating and opens up the possibility for a lot of theories and things to test, which is awesome from the perspective of a scientists. A third thing I quite enjoy studying in microbial influences is dysbiosis and disease states. The surgery complications article that was required piqued my interest in improving care through manipulating the microbiome.
The link between obesity and the gut microbiome is one that I feel has a lot of data to look through. It is frustrating to find two perfectly good peer reviewed article with no conflict of interests which conflict each other. Regarding microbiome effects in humans, that is the case for nearly every link! There is always one paper which finds this bacteria and another which find a different one, or the same one doing something different. It seems as though the microbiome is highly diverse from person to person which could cause the issue, where the immune system or hormones generally are consistent. Other microbial topics I find personally interesting are the link between dysbiosis and IBD, as well as the use of microbes in treatment and therapy.
To prepare for my final paper, I will definitely start by researching microbial effects on obesity in humans. This is the most fascinating subject to me and the link between digestion and insulin resistance, which are both important factors in obesity, and gut microbiome is well established. There is also a plethora of studies on the subject, so research will be engaging and insightful. I am excited to begin the paper as there is a lot of room for opinion and debate with results open to interpretation. Finally, if the obesity topic does not work out, I have identified several other topics of interest above as back ups.
