Proud of undergrad @marialovallo.bsky.social who gave a research lightning talk at the @psumbiome.bsky.social Networking Event this afternoon. She's single-handedly driven this collaboration between my and Thomas labs identifying how the microbiome shapes flight phenotypes in Drosophila 🪰

We had extensive metadata that allowed us to link specific lifestyle factors like smoking, grain, and nettle consumption to changes in the oral microbiome.

There are 8 oral genera that followed that lifestyle gradient and were higher in more traditional lifestyles, including Streptobacillus and an unclassified genus of Porphyromonadaceae. One genus (Atopobium) had higher relative abundance in more Indistrialized lifestyles.

We studied groups within Nepal to decouple the effects of geography from lifestyle in determining oral microbiome composition. Diversity does *not* significantly differ across groups, but composition mirrors lifestyle from foragers -> small scale agriculturalism -> industrialism

Excited to be at #ASHG23 with lab members Erica Ryu and Naomi Huntley! If you're interested in intersecting host genetics with the microbiome, check out our posters 👇

Had a really great time chatting all things microbiome at the Balance of the Microverse Symposium. Also very fun to be immersed in microbes at the premiere of their planetarium film 🦠🧫 - thanks for the invite!