In Search of a Quantitative Definition of the Gut Microbiome in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Rebecca Stumpf, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Several studies have shown that patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have gut microbial communities that differ substantially from healthy controls, which implies potential clinical importance for the microbiome as a diagnostic tool or even as a treatment via therapeutic manipulation. But despite repeated studies showing a connection, a consistent definition of the microbiome of IBD in general or any specific disease‐state in particular has not been established.

One likely reason is that the high‐dimensional data and detailed analytical protocols involved make comparisons across studies difficult and prevent any one study from having the requisite statistical power. We propose to address this is by aggregating publicly available raw sequence data from past studies and re‐analyzing each sample and using a consistent, granular protocol recently developed by this team, with the aim of developing a clearer definition of the IBD gut microbiome.

This computationally intensive analysis is ideal for Blue Waters because the code required has been proven and the project can be configured to run almost exclusively on backfill capacity, giving it minimal opportunity cost with potentially high impact and implications for personalized medicine.