Hector Romero Soto
Program: Unspecified
Current advisor:
Undergraduate university: University of Puerto Rico-Cayey
Research summary
Preclinical studies followed by randomized controlled clinical studies by Jeffrey Gordon’s group have provided evidence that the gut microbiome plays an important role in the pathogenesis of childhood undernutrition, and that repair of the microbiome with microbiome-directed complementary foods (MDCFs) restores ponderal and linear growth with associated improvements in systems physiology. The focus of my rotation in Gordon’s lab was to understand how ongoing analyses from a class of gut bacterial enzymes known as fatty acid amide hydrolases (FAAHs) could be used to identify metabolites that discriminate the expressed functional properties of the gut microbiomes of healthy versus undernourished Bangladeshi women with environmental enteric dysfunction (EED). I applied bioinformatic tools to existing RNA-Seq datasets from gnotobiotic mice and organoids to further characterize the expression of genes involved in gut barrier function that are potential biomarkers/ mediators of the predicted effects of these FAAH metabolites. This knowledge could be applied to select specific FAAH metabolites for preclinical testing (intestinal organoids, gnotobiotic mice) as novel mediators of gut barrier repair in undernourished women and children with EED.
Graduate publications