By: Sarah Thamer
Decked in long tubes and cable wires, the Blekhman lab on the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus is designed to collect data at lightning-fast speeds about human gut microbiomes — the collection of microbes living in the human body that may be linked to cancer.
Ran Blekhman, the lab’s principal investigator and a population geneticist at the school, researches how genetic variations in humans contribute to differences in the microbiome and how the interaction between bacteria in the microbiome is causing diseases.