In the original text, it was mentioned that because the Human Genome Project did not sequence the genes belonging to the vast communities of bacteria that live in us, the project missed 99% of the genes in the adult body. W.M. Keck Foundation has helped fill the gap through a $1.45 million grant to develop new approaches in isolating, sequencing and analyzing bacteria that inhabits the intestine. Compound light microscopes can be used to do this. This grant supports a partnership between Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD. And Dr. Robert J. Glaser as well as Sean R. Eddy, Ph.D.
As mentioned in the article, the Center of Genome Sciences (CGS), which Gordon heads as its direction is an innovative, interdepartmental, interdisciplinary enterprise and a major facet of the University’s BioMed21 initiative. It aims to translate genomic science into patient care. The CGS assumes an initiating role in devising ways to translate data from their projects to allow better understanding of life’s evolution on earth and help create new methods of diagnostic and treatment of common and uncommon diseases. The pathogenic organisms that cause these diseases can be isolated and identified with the use of microscopes such as a compound light microscope.
Gordon, as mentioned in the article, sees the human gut as a bioreactor programmed by no less than 800 species of bacteria which provide us cult functions that we had not developed of our own. He has in fact shown that certain bacteria allow harvesting of calories from components of diet which are not even digestable. A compound light microscope can be used to make a similar study. Some microbes acts as regulators of energy stored in fats cells. Obesity or obesity-related diseases like diabetes and heart diseases may have something to do with the variation of the composition of microbial bacteria, which can be studied using a compound light microscope, in every individual or with his predisposition to such illness. Whatever these revelations suggests, still, a comprehensive study of these microbes in so far as they affect our health is hampered by researchers difficulty to grow and study them outside of the intestine.
Researchers through the support of Keck Foundation will try to create new techniques in harvesting microbial communities in the intestines and in sequencing the genomes of new species even without culturing them in the laboratory. A new computable method for mining genome sequence data is being develop a method that can rapidly and accurately classify bacterial species. With this insight , a large database of molecular information about gut ecosystem will be made accessible to the public and researchers alike.
To this end, the aim of researchers to identify the products of bacterial metabolism and to characterize previously unknown compounds that regulate the properties of microbial community using microscopes such as a compound light microscope, will not be long to be realized. It is in this effort of the Keck Foundation to commit itself in funding high-risk projects that Dr. Gordon and the scientific world has much to be grateful for this foundation support will open the way for future explorations of microbial world and shed light on the many mysteries and obstacles surrounding the interior world. Read more on this subject