Host Genomic Control of the Microbiome

The composition of bacterial communities in and on an animal's body varies widely across individuals, and has been associated with multiple health conditions. While the microbiome is influenced by environmental factors, some degree of genetic influence of the host on the microbiome is also expected. In my talk, I will describe some of our recent studies attempting to shed light on the effect of host genetic variation on the microbiome in health and disease. I will describe a joint analysis of the composition of the human microbiome and host genetic variation. By mining the shotgun metagenomic data from the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) for host DNA reads, we identified strong correlations between host genetic variation and microbiome composition, and show that these correlations are driven by variation in host immunity pathways and genes associated with microbiome-related complex diseases. I will also describe a new machine learning technique, that given joint host genetic variation and microbiome composition data, identifies host SNPs that are associated with microbial taxa abundances.