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Owen White: It's exciting to see that we still have so
many people here in attendance. Let me start by just asking us to muse on the symbiotic
relationship that is experienced in this community between the research community and the sponsors
that we have here. As you know, sponsors usually help to fray some of the costs of the meeting.
And then what we do is we go and buy their products. And what we'd like to do is just
make sure that they get a little bit of exposure.
The sponsors that we have are Kyogen [spelled phonetically], Roush [spelled phonetically],
Illumina, Mobile, Life Tech, Metabalome, and the Journal Microbiome. Many of the sponsors
are here, and I really strongly encourage people to stop by and look at their products.
That would be very helpful. Thank you.
One other logistical item, we are holding a poster award, and the ballots are starting
to come in. We have a ballot box right outside where I'm pointing. And if you use the green
card that's associated with your name tag, to -- as a ballot, that would be very helpful.
So please vote on your favorite poster.
The last thing I'd like to mention is that this meeting is very much about hearing from
all of you about your gaps, needs, and challenges. And we've been receiving lots of different
approaches from people when they talk about this. Lita and I very much had in mind getting
things like practical gaps that are preventing you, or encumbering you, or challenging you
to be able to do your work.
So, as an example, just show of hands here, how many people have submitted data to SRA?
And how many people have had difficulty submitting data to SRA? Okay. That's an example of the
type of thing that we're talking about. That -- it would be helpful for that to emerge
for -- the purpose of that is to let program officers know that it's difficult. There may
be ways that we could develop policies to streamline things that result in challenges
for you. And getting that down on record would be very helpful. And Rob and Jacques are writing
a report. And we'd like, at some stage, for them to try and summarize some of the gaps
and challenges that we've encountered, and share them with you. And we do hope that this
really does appear on record at some point. So that would be very helpful.
So, as the talks are given, any time that those types of things could be -- could emerge
and be articulated, that would be helpful. And those of you who still have time to change
any of your slides in your presentations, feel free to toss things in there. I think
issues having to do with harmonization of protocols, places where policy development
could make your life easier, ways that we could make the policies across all the NIH
institutes more uniform, to simplify things; all of those things are open, and, of course,
we are not aware of all of them, so please share them with us.
All right, so I'll ask Rob Knight, the session sharer, to come up to introduce our first
keynote speaker.
Rob Knight: Okay. Thanks, Owen. And again, on that report,
we really would appreciate anything that you would like to go into that report. Email me
or Jacques, and we'll make sure it gets in there. We also welcome additional co-authors
for it and so forth. It'll be really nice if it can be a consensus piece for the community
really highlighting those current gaps, needs, and challenges.
So, anyway, so it's my great pleasure to introduce Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, who's currently
at NYU. So Maria Gloria has covered a really amazing scope in her research. So, she got
her bachelor's in Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, Venezuela, in the field of biology.
Then got a Masters at Aberdeen, in animal nutrition. Then a Ph.D., also at Aberdeen,
in microbiology. So even then spanning a fairly wide range of research topics.
And after that did a series of post-doctoral appointments in France, the U.S., Scotland,
Sweden, Spain, Venezuela. I had to write them all down because it's hard to keep track of
her bouncing around the globe. And working on a lot of different exciting research topics
there.
Her first paper was actually on sharks, although since then, she's studied a number of other
topics, including the hoatzin, which is a folivorous bird. So -- adapted to eating leaves,
and with a surprising amount of convergent evolution, to mammalian herbivores. She's
also done a fair bit of work on other mammalian species, on helicobacter pylori, and then
more recently switching more to human microbiome, including studies -- including a very important
study looking at the -- looking at how the delivery mode of infants affects their microbiome,
and also the development of infants.
So one really -- so one really -- one really fascinating aspect of microbiome, as she will
tell us shortly, is this question about how much we've altered the microbiome through
modern practices, including antibiotics. And so you've heard from a number of speakers
yesterday about that topic. And so one fascinating thing that Maria Gloria has been able to do
is to go into the Amazon and work with people living very traditional lifestyles. And I
think she's going to tell us a lot about the results of that research today, including
its impact on the microbiota.
So I think -- so I think I'll leave it at that, and I'm really looking forward to what
I'm sure will be a spectacular talk. So if you could join me in welcoming Maria Gloria.
[applause]