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The Roles Of Capsular Polysaccharides And Diet In The Immune Response To A Bacteroides Thetaiotaomicron Antigen, Samantha Hsieh
The Roles Of Capsular Polysaccharides And Diet In The Immune Response To A Bacteroides Thetaiotaomicron Antigen, Samantha Hsieh
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The environment is well recognized to modulate immune responses within the intestinal mucosa in a general fashion. However, the connection between the effects of the environment on the immune response directed towards specific intestinal microbes is unclear. Progress in this area has been hampered by the lack of a model system in which the immune responses to a specific antigen in a gut symbiont can be examined. To this end, we developed a novel CD4+ T cell model, termed BθOM, that is specific for a dominant antigen in the gut symbiont Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron (B. theta). In this work, we use …
Characterizing The Fitness Landscapes Of Gut Symbionts In Defined Community And Diet Contexts, Meng Wu
Characterizing The Fitness Landscapes Of Gut Symbionts In Defined Community And Diet Contexts, Meng Wu
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
A species' niche is the description of all the environmental conditions required to permit a population of that species to persist, including the effects of the population on those conditions. This definition includes the species' resource requirements, as well as stress tolerances and interactions with other species acting as competitors, predators, parasites, and mutualists. The human gut microbiota serves as a microbial `metabolic organ' tasked in part with the biotransformation of many components of our diet. Relatively little is known about the factors that allow members of the human gut microbiota to persist in a habitat that experiences marked changes …
Characterization Of Human Gut Microbiota Dynamics Using Model Communities In Gnotobiotic Mice, Nathaniel Patrick Mcnulty
Characterization Of Human Gut Microbiota Dynamics Using Model Communities In Gnotobiotic Mice, Nathaniel Patrick Mcnulty
All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)
The human gut is colonized by a diverse array of microbes, collectively referred to as the microbiota. The microbiota's complexity poses significant challenges in characterizing the rules dictating its assembly, inferring the functional roles of its component species, and understanding how communities sense and respond to changes in their habitat. We developed defined, representative model communities comprised of sequenced human gut bacteria that could be characterized in a highly controlled manner in gnotobiotic mice, plus a suite of scalable molecular tools for assaying community properties. These tools were first used to evaluate how the microbiota is impacted by probiotic bacterial …