“I study how we interact with the bacteria that live in our intestines. We host a remarkably diverse collection of gut microbes that greatly impact our health. My lab focuses on bacteria considered beneficial to humans that, paradoxically, retain characteristics of pathogens.”
Sara J. Clasen
Assistant Professor
Department of Microbiology
The mammalian gut is an incredibly complex ecosystem that remains a black box in many respects. Technological and computational advances are revealing more information about who colonizes the gut and what products they make, but there is so much more to discover, and the impact of microbes on human development extends far beyond the gut.
In the Clasen Lab we study members of the Lachnospiraceae family of bacteria. Lachnospiraceae promote host health by producing the short-chain fatty acid butyrate. However, they also build flagella, which activates host immune responses. The lab’s goal is to understand how these seemingly incompatible features are reconciled in the gastrointestinal tract.
Why I do what I do
I was wowed by a seminar that demonstrated how bacterial lipids impact host immune development. These interactions, however, are never unidirectional. Here at UT, we examine host-flagellin dynamics to understand how host responses drive bacterial expression. These interactions are especially relevant in the context of inflammatory bowel disorders.
Currently working on
While the complexity of the gut ecosystem is awe inspiring, it complicates our ability to study host-microbe interactions. We are building the capacity to monitor specific bacteria in simpler microbial communities.