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.

I would be most excited to fund something about long term effects of breast feeding. I feel like we discussed breast feeding versus formula feeding a lot in class. However, the studies we looked did not follow the babies for very long. I think it would be really interesting and beneficial to study this for 20 years or something. It would be a really long study and it would be impossible to control for the infinite variables that would effect the microbiota along with if someone was breast fed or formula fed. If it could be done, I do want to know how much how someone was fed as an infant plays a role in the rest of their life like in their teens and twenties. From this study we would find out how much of a difference, if any, breast feeding makes. This information could change how mothers choose to feed their babies, what doctors recommend, or what NICUs or hospitals practice.