The Bel Lab, boldly going where no one else bothers to. @ERC_Research funded lab. Former @LHooperLab postdoc. Opinions are my microbiota's. #NewPI
Sep 11 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
🚨🚨I’m excited to present our lab’s new paper where we tried to provide a mechanistic explanation for the link between antibiotic use and risk of developing inflammatory bowel diseases (#IBD). A 🧵/1 science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
Our immune system is separated from the trillions of microbes inhabiting our intestine by a thin layer of impenetrable mucus. This separation prevents our immune system from triggering inflammation in response to our microbiota, allowing for commensalism. /2
Mar 21 • 23 tweets • 8 min read
🚨🚨I'm delighted to present our new work, where we aimed to understand why antibiotic use is a risk factor for development of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Yes, MUCUS will be involved! A 🧵/1
With the acute rise in IBD cases, scientists have looked to environmental factors to explain this epidemic. Links between IBD and what we eat, drink, or the medicines we take were examined. /2
Feb 3, 2023 • 11 tweets • 8 min read
🚨🚨I'm proud to present our lab's first peer-reviewed paper, out at @cellhostmicrobe🥳. We started out by asking a basic question about mucus secretion, and discovered something surprising about genetic risk to inflammatory bowel diseases (#IBD). A🧵/1 cell.com/cell-host-micr…
Every cell that secretes something needs to have some kind of control over how much it secretes. We asked how goblet cells in the intestine "know" how much mucus they need to secrete. I wrote about it here when we published our #preprint 👇🏻. /2
🚨🚨I’m very excited (and terrified) to share our lab’s first work (and my first as PI😱)!! We asked a seemingly fundamental question; how do mucus-secreting cells “know” how much mucus they need to secrete? Answering this taught us a lot about susceptibility to #IBD. A 🧵 /1
Mucus is a great solution to separate yourself from the environment (and the potentially harmful microbes in it). Just think of how many organisms secrete mucus, from corals to snails. Luckily, evolution made us non-slimy on the outside. But we use this trick inside our body. /2
