Catherine A. Lozupone

Catherine Anne Lozupone (born 1975) is an American microbiologist who specializes in bacteria and how they impact human health. Her noted work in trying to determine what constitutes "normal" gut bacteria, led to her creation of the UniFrac algorithm, used by researchers to plot the relationships between microbial communities in the human body.

Catherine A. Lozupone
Born
Catherine Anne Lozupone

1975 (age 45–46)
Academic background
Alma materVillanova University
Colorado State University
University of Colorado Boulder
Doctoral advisorRob Knight
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Colorado Denver
Main interestsmicrobiologist
Notable worksDiversity, Stability and Resilience of the Human Gut Microbiota

Biography

Catherine A. Lozupone earned a Bachelor of Science from Villanova University in 1997 and went on to obtain a master's degree from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1999.[1] She went on to complete her doctoral work at the University of Colorado Boulder studying under Rob Knight, who is the founder of the American Gut Project.[2] At the time of her doctoral research, little was known about the microbiome (genes of the bacteria, archaea, microscopic eukaryotes, and viruses interacting in an environment) of the gut and the symbiotic relationship between host and bacteria. Her thesis delineated the UniFrac algorithm which has allowed researchers to visualize the relationships between microbial communities in the human gut, how they interact, and how they might be related to specific diseases.[3] Lozupone's work, detailed in a 2012 paper which appeared in Nature entitled "Diversity, Stability and Resilience of the Human Gut Microbiota", was noted for its attempt to analyze what is the "normal" bacterial state in the human gut. By approaching the gut as an ecosystem, scientists are then able to factor in the effects of lifestyle, diet, health status which might change the bacterial makeup present in the gastrointestinal tract.[2]

In 2013, after completing her post-doctoral research in Knight's lab, Lozupone started her own lab at the University of Colorado Denver,[2] where she works in the Department of Medicine as an associate professor. She has begun evaluating the composition differences in the microbiome of healthy individuals versus those of HIV positive individuals. She is attempting to determine if T cell loss causes change in the bacteria levels, thus prompting chronic inflammation for people living with HIV.[4] According to Thomson Reuters, Lozupone was one of the most cited researchers in the world in 2014.[5]

Selected work
  • Lozupone, Catherine A. (2007). Global Patterns of Bacterial Diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 104. Ann Arbor, Michigan. pp. 11436–40. doi:10.1073/pnas.0611525104. ISBN 978-0-549-14062-7. PMC 2040916. PMID 17592124.
  • Hamady, Micah; Lozupone, Catherine A.; Knight, Rob (2010). "Fast UniFrac: facilitating high-throughput phylogenetic analyses of microbial communities including analysis of pyrosequencing and PhyloChip data". The ISME Journal. London, England: Nature Publishing Group. 4 (1): 17–27. doi:10.1038/ismej.2009.97. PMC 2797552. PMID 19710709.
  • Lozupone, Catherine A.; Stombaugh, Jesse I.; Gordon, Jeffrey I.; Jansson, Janet K.; Knight, Rob (13 September 2012). "Diversity, stability and resilience of the human gut microbiota". Nature. London, England: Nature Publishing Group. 489 (7415): 220–230. Bibcode:2012Natur.489..220L. doi:10.1038/nature11550. PMC 3577372. PMID 22972295.

References
  1. Lozupone 2007, p. title.
  2. Pollan, Michael (15 May 2013). "Some of My Best Friends Are Germs". The New York Times. New York City, New York. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  3. Knight 2015, p. 89.
  4. "Catherine Lozupone, PhD". Virology Education. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  5. "The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014" (PDF). Thomson Reuters. p. 68. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-11-17. Retrieved 2015-11-09.

Bibliography
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