- Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH)
- Pseudomonas aeruginosaBaby Observational NUtrition Study (BONUS [P30])
- Community level changesCSF
Traditional culture techniques are currently the standard practice for microbial detection in patient samples. However, these techniques have important limitations, as many organisms cannot grow under standard laboratory conditions. While these techniques help us identify some of the most abundant and fastest-growing members of our microbiome, they also provide no information on the genes these organisms carry or express. Culture also cannot give us information on how the bacteria are organized spatially or how the bacteria might interact with one another. Therefore, we currently have only a limited understanding of the important species, their spatial distributions, and the community behaviors of complex, polymicrobial infections, such as those in the CF airway and the CF intestinal tract. We aim to reveal this information through the use of novel techniques such as metagenomics, metabolomics, and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). These techniques will provide us with information on the diversity of microbes in samples from chronically-infected children, what those microbes can do, and how they are organized. We also work to relate these microbiomes to clinical outcomes and to symptoms, to try to better understand their roles in disease. By gaining a better understanding of the complex microbiomes in infections like CF, we can better define why they are so difficult to treat, and how they impact patient outcomes.