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Microbial Informatics and Data Science

A circular chart with overlapping lines representing a data science study

Data science is a powerful tool that advances our understanding of how gut microbiomes relate to disease. This Circos plot, generated by the Sharpton Lab from thousands of human gut microbiome samples, shows the presence of common microbial indicators across many diseases.

In the post-genomic era, microbiology has emerged as a quantitative, data-driven science. Researchers in the Department of Microbiology develop and apply cutting edge bioinformatic techniques, including computational approaches to characterize microbial genomes and metagenomes, statistical methods to link microbial traits to ecological or health outcomes, and deep learning tools to resolve microbe-microbe interactions. Our efforts have helped to transform the discovery of biological processes from large datasets and hold potential to advance efforts to monitor and manage ecological and human health.