Esteban said this project builds on recent discoveries that microbes in humans’ gut lining produce material called tryptophan metabolites that can help reveal the nature of autoimmune diseases such as myalgic encephalomyelitis, commonly called chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). He said scientists have discovered some similarities in the variety of microbes found in humans with ME/CFS and those with long COVID.
The students enrolled in this summer’s URSI project compared the kinds of bacteria found in the gut lining of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome to those of healthy patients. Conrad said the research she and Cullinan and Luong conducted this summer confirmed there’s a difference between the microbiomes of ME/CFS patients and healthy patients. “ME/CFS patients have less variety of bacteria in their gut with an unbalanced distribution of the present species,” she said.
Cullinan said her task for the project was to extract DNA information from human cells treated under many different conditions to determine optimal conditions for the experiment. Then she looked at the expression of a certain gene to determine the difference between the kinds of metabolites in healthy patients and in people with ME/CFS. She said she appreciated the opportunity to spend an extended period of time on a single research project. “Having eight weeks to conduct my research enabled me to pursue a project that was specific to my interests,” Cullinan said.
Luong said some of the research she conducted had not yielded definitive results that enabled them to make any concrete conclusions. “Ultimately, although we were not able to validate our hypothesis through this experiment, we believe that we should continue collecting more samples,” she said.
Luong, Conrad, and Cullinan will continue to work on the project with Esteban during the coming academic year, acting as team leaders for other students who will join the study.
