The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has received nearly $11 million to study environmental microbes and microbiomes in relation to human health.
Microbiomes are communities of microorganisms like bacteria that live on and in people, animals and throughout the natural environment.
Five years ago, UH Mānoa received $10 million for the first phase of the grant from the National Institutes of Health.
That funding provided support for UH Mānoa's Integrative Center for Environmental Microbiomes and Human Health.
With the second phase of funding, the university plans to study the ways microbiomes impact human health, how they are affected by the environment, and the ways an animal’s microbiome relates to ongoing research.
Andrea Jani is an assistant researcher at UH studying fruit flies. Her research is one of four projects to receive funding through the grant.
She said fruit flies allow her to study the process of infectious disease.
With the NIH funding, she said she plans to "look at how the microbiome responds to infection to start to understand conceptually what causes the microbiome to be stable or not stable in the face of infection."
"Then we can take especially some of the ecological principles — the ecological factors that contribute to stability — and start to apply those to humans," Jani explained.
