Sandia National Labs Academic Alliance Collaboration Report 2020-2021

EXAMINING INFECTIONS AT SINGLE-CELL RESOLUTION COULD BE A GAME CHANGER

The human microbiome is a community of trillions of microorganisms including bacteria, fungi and viruses that live on and inside the human body. Not all microbes are dangerous, but some are pathogens that could cause havoc if they increase exponentially or move to environments where they shouldn’t exist. For example, with regard to COVID-19 virus, some recent lab studies suggest that a compromised gut microbiome with depleted levels of bacteria species may play a role in a patient’s severity. The current genetic sequencing methods employed when evaluating a complex microbiome collect RNA from bulk samples that contain large numbers of cells, and therefore do not account for the heterogeneity of

cell-microbe interactions

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Sandia Academic Alliance Program

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