Out of a wide range of thirteen projects funded by the UW–Madison Microbiome Initiative, five of them are led or in collaboration with Integrated Program in Biochemistry faculty members. The funding was announced June 20, 2017.
Biochemistry assistant professor Ophelia Venturelli is the principal investigator for Developing Model-Guided Frameworks to Dissect Butyrate Production in the Human Gut Microbiota, and biomolecular chemistry professor John Denu is leading a project titled Gut Microbial Metabolism and Host Epigenetic States.
The initiative, which focuses on the microorganisms living in specific environments such as the human body, is part of a series of strategic initiatives launched by the UW–Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education. It aims to seed research likely to galvanize the university’s research community and to position UW–Madison faculty to be more competitive when applying for federal funding in specific research areas.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and the Graduate School also provided support for the initiative. IPiB is the world-class joint graduate program of the Department of Biochemistry and the Department of Biomolecular Chemistry.
Other projects faculty are listed on include:
- John Denu, Feyza Engin, and Ophelia Venturelli, collaborators: A Germ-free Mouse Facility for the UW–Madison Community
- Josh Coon, collaborator: Contributions of Gut Microbes to Alzheimer’s Disease
- Michael Sussman, co-principal investigator: The Microbiome Hub: Enabling a Biological Revolution at UW–Madison
Read more about this initiative at the press release below.
URL: https://news.wisc.edu/new-campus-initiative-targets-microbiome-research/