NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America today announced the launch of its Gut Microbiome Initiative in partnership with the Center for Genome Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and collaborators at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The first phase of this interdisciplinary research initiative will leverage the strengths and expertise of a group that has pioneered studies of the genetic and metabolic foundations of the alliance forged between gut microbes and their human hosts. Their research, which also encompasses the question of how our gut microbial communities are acquired and sustained, has focused on monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins and their mothers. Using the latest generation of massively parallel DNA sequencers and sophisticated computational methods, they will study the complex role that intestinal microbial communities play in digestive health and in disease states.
