The 麻豆影院 is launching a new Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, today about the many different microbial species that inhabit the human gut and how they may influence health and disease.
The free course, titled Gut Check: Exploring Your Microbiome, is being offered through CU-麻豆影院 and Coursera, an educational platform that partners with universities and institutions worldwide to offer free online courses. Gut Check will be taught by CU-麻豆影院 Associate Professor Rob Knight, Senior Research Associate Jessica Metcalf and Research Associate Katherine Amato, all of CU-麻豆影院鈥檚 BioFrontiers Institute.
So far nearly 13,000 people have registered for the course. The microbiome refers to all microbial species living on and in individual organisms. There are roughly 10 microbes for every single human cell, and each human carries an estimated 100 trillion microbes.
The free on-line lectures will be combined with interviews with leading microbiome researchers to help participants explore microbes inhabiting the gut, what they are doing there and the innovative tools used to study them.
Some of the areas of study that will be highlighted in the Coursera include the role of gut microbes in obesity, the effectiveness of fecal transplants and the mysterious connection between autism spectrum disorders and the gut microbiome.
听鈥淯nlike our human genomes, which are all more than 99 percent the same, our microbiomes are mostly very different from one another,鈥� said Knight. 鈥淭hese microbial differences may explain why our bodies respond differently to different diets, but may ultimately help us predict which diets will work for which people.鈥�
The Coursera course also will cover the American Gut Project, a crowd-sourced study of the gut microbiome founded by CU-麻豆影院 and the American Food Project that has more than 3,000 participants to date. Gut Check will help course participants to better understand how the gut microbiome impacts their everyday lives, said Knight.
In collaboration with American Gut, British Gut -- the United Kingdom鈥檚 largest open source science project to understand diversity of the human gut -- was launched today by King鈥檚 College London.
鈥淔or a long time, we thought of microbes as our enemies, but they are actually an essential part of our bodies,鈥� said Metcalf. 鈥淭hey train our immune system, help us make vitamins, and digest our food, for example.
Not ready to commit to a MOOC?
Join on Oct. 18 from 1 to 4 p.m. in the听Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building, Butcher Auditorium for Rob Knight's presentation, "Introduction to Your Human Microbiome."
鈥淐oursera is a great platform for us to reach a global audience about the importance of our microbial partners, and CU-麻豆影院 is the perfect place to broadcast this information because it is a leader in the field of microbiome research,鈥� she said.
To sign up for Gut Check: Exploring Your Microbiome, visit . For more information about the American Gut Project visit . For more information on BioFrontiers visit .