Baby microbiome: Investigating the human neonatal lung and gut microbiome and its impact on health and disease

The early life microbiome is highly dynamic in healthy full-term infants as well as in preterm infants. As such, the microbiome is extremely susceptible to external influences that can dramatically affect the short- and long-term health of the infant. In this project, we set out to investigate the underlying mechanisms by which the microbiome of lung and gut interacts with the immune system in early life, and how these interactions affect health and disease. Using an established clinical study, GLAM & I (The gut and lung and their microbiomes & immunology), this project focusses on the microbiome aspects of this large collaboration. Using established workflows at Monash Children's Hospital, we collect clinical data and multiple sample types from term and preterm infants, including blood, lung lavage, nasal swabs, stool and expressed breast milk from the mothers. This project gives you the opportunity to closely work with the babies and their families and also have the opportunity to gain experience in a diverse set of molecular techniques. Direct clinical relevance: High Involvement of the student: Patient consenting and recruitment, sample collection and workup, culturing of cells and bacteria, generation of large omics-datasets and their biased and unbiased analysis