- Acronym
- Antartic-ome
- Code
- PNRA0000006
- Anno
- 2024
- Research area
- Life science
- Specific research topic
- Human microbiome transmission investigated in the extreme confined built environment of Antartica
- Region of interest
- Mario Zucchelli Station
- PI
- Nicola Segata
- PI establishment
- University of Trento
- Institutional website
- https://segatalab.cibio.unitn.it/
- Other institutions and subjects involved
- University of Ca Foscari, University of Tuscia
- Consistency of the research team
- Project status
- In progress
- Main stations used
- Attività svolta in Italia MZS
- The project
The human microbiome is a key component of our own biology and has important biomedical applications. Yet, very little is known about how members of the microbiome are acquired, spread, and transmitted across hosts. From preliminary supporting data, we hypothesize that person-to-person microbiome transmission (MT) is extensive and shapes the microbiome according to host interaction networks, but specific studies to investigate it are lacking. Antarctica, whose conditions lie on the edge of habitability, characterized by a cold and dry climate, low water availability, strong katabatic winds, salt concentration, desiccation, and high radiation, represents a unique chance to (i) explore human microbiome transmission in a common confined and isolated extreme built environment and to (ii) determine the composition and importance of the pre-existent microbiome vs. the contribution of a new environment in reshaping it. In this project, we propose a multidisciplinary approach to unravel the features of human microbiome (gut, oral, and cutaneous) transmissibility in volunteers expeditioners of Mario Zucchelli Station, integrating metagenomics and culturomics with an anthropological approach to track and model the transmission of known and unknown members of the microbiome across diverse social and interaction networks. This project will advance our understanding on the direct transmission forces shaping the human microbiome in a confined and isolated in-built environment. Importantly, our results will also provide valuable insights for outer space missions aboard the International Space Station, where it is critical to determine the mutualistic relationship between humans and their microbiome under unique environmental conditions imposed by space flights. At the same time, conducting this type of research in Antarctica offers an extra-terrestrial mode of thinking about dynamics related to human life on Earth, as that of microbiome transmission in social groups.
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- Motivation, importance of research
With the exception of specific scenarios such as vertical mother-to-infant transmission at birth or the artificial microbial transmission with fecal-microbiota transplantation , very little is known about whether, how, and to what extent the non-pathogenic microbial components of our body are transmitted across individuals (regardless of directionally). This knowledge gap is particularly relevant as increasingly many human conditions and diseases have been associated - in several cases causally - with the microbiome . There are several reasons for the current lack of understanding of human microbiome transmission (MT). First, the biomedical relevance of studying MT has only recently emerged with the evidence that (i) microbe-host interaction is strain-dependent (e.g. conspecific strains stimulate differently the immune system, that (ii) there is extensive strain-level variability in human-associated species (i.e. many different conspecific strains exist in the human populations), and that (iii) unrelated individuals usually carry distinct conspecific strains (i.e. strains are highly ‘personal’). Then, the lack of properly-sized cohorts with information about the relations between individuals prevented generating reliable MT hypotheses. As such, a model of person-to-person microbiome transmission (MT) is needed to explain the epidemiology of human-associated microbes and the ecology of the human microbiome.
With this project, we are submitting the hypothesis that, untangling how members of the multi-body site human microbiome are acquired and transmitted across individuals in a unique confined and isolated built-in environment such as the Italian Antarctic Mario Zucchelli station, we will provide insights to understand the extent to which MT - in different conditions and ages - shapes the human microbiome of individuals that are part of a social network. With a non-negligible role of MT, indeed, it becomes key to understand how our lifestyle and person-to-person interaction network shapes MT and thus our microbiome.
- Objectives of the proposal
Objective 1. Longitudinal microbiome sampling, metadata collection, and identification of meaningful categories/variables of social interaction emerging at the Mario Zucchelli Station between volunteers before and during the Antarctic mission (WP1).
Objective 2. Metagenomic sequencing of the collected human metagenomes (N=800) of, computational metagenomic profiling, MT network construction and analysis (WP2).
Objective 3. Targeted cultivation and phenotypically characterization of highly-transmissible fungal taxa and cultivation-based validation of transmission events.(WP3).
Objective 4. Transdisciplinary integration of the outcomes from Objectives 1-3, to characterize the patterns of person-to-person and environment-mediate MT, its links with human interaction networks, and longitudinal adaptation of the human microbiome at the built environment of Mario Zucchelli Station and its anthropological interpretation and analysis (WP4).
- Activities carried out and results achieved
- Products