Harnessing the human microbiome for therapeutic purposes
October 27 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Statistical Bioinformatics Seminar
Dr Shanlin Ke, The Ohio State University
This is an online event held via Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/85114748391
The human microbiome plays a critical role in health and disease and represents a promising source for novel therapeutic strategies. In this talk, I will first provide an overview of how microbiomes are currently leveraged for therapeutic purposes. I will then introduce a computational approach we have developed to uncover complex host–microbiota interactions. Using our recent PTSD–microbiome study as an example, I will demonstrate how this approach can reveal host–microbiota interactions and be validated through animal models. Next, I will present our AI-based framework for discovering antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) from the urinary microbiome, highlighting its potential to combat antimicrobial resistance. I will conclude by discussing an idea: rejuvenating the human gut microbiome to preserve the “healthy” microbiome for future therapeutic use.
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Dr Shanlin Ke
Dr Shanlin Ke joined The Ohio State University as an Assistant Professor in May 2025 in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition within the Department of Internal Medicine. Dr Ke is a biologist with expertise in bioinformatics, microbiome, machine learning, multi-omics, and wet-lab techniques. He received his PhD in Animal Genetics from Jiangxi Agricultural University in 2020. In 2018, he joined Dr Yang-Yu Liu’s lab at the Channing Division of Network Medicine, Harvard Medical School as a visiting student. He continued his microbiome research as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr Liu’s lab beginning in 2021, where he developed and applied computational approaches to study host–microbiota interactions in chronic conditions (e.g., inflammatory bowel disease and post-traumatic stress disorder) and infectious diseases (e.g., Clostridioides difficile infection and urinary tract infection). In parallel, he conducted in vitro and in vivo experiments to validate computational findings and investigate the mechanisms underlying host-microbiota interactions in human diseases.
At OSU, Dr Ke’s lab focuses on developing innovative methodologies and leveraging bioinformatics tools, metagenomic sequencing, machine learning, and wet-lab techniques to investigate the role of the human microbiome in pancreatic diseases and to develop microbiome-based therapeutics.