Jeffrey Gordon: 00:07
I was young at a time when the Space Age was dawning and members of my generation looked to the sky in awe and tried to imagine what it might be to not only see the Earth from low Earth orbit, but also go beyond Earth to other planets. And my dream as a child was to be an astronaut, to go to Mars and to look for new life.
Julie Gould: 00:33
Hello, and welcome to Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. I’m Julie Gould. And that was the voice of Professor Jeffrey Gordon from the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, USA, outlining his childhood dreams.
Professor Gordon and his team were awarded the 2022-2023 Global Grants for Gut Health Research Group Prize.
This is a grant programme for investigator-initiated research into the human gut microbiota, supported by Yakult and Nature Portfolio.
And this episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Global Grants for Gut Health, supported by Yakult and Nature Portfolio.
You can find out more about the grant programme, including details of the latest funding call, at https://www.guthealth-grants.com/
But now, let’s go back to Professor Gordon and hear more about his research, his collaborators, and the lab culture in his award-winning lab.
Jeffrey Gordon: 01:27
Obviously, I’ve never made it to Mars. But my journey has allowed me/we to look at a terra incognita. And that’s life within.
So I only have to journey a few metres inside and explore the gastrointestinal tract to find really fascinating life forms and interactions.
Julie Gould: 01:51
This inner tube of life, or the gut, is teeming with activity. Millions of microbes live there. And what Dr Gordon and his collaborators are asking is whether the microbes living in the gut are communicating with the cells that line the gut.
They wanted to know: what are the contributions of this magnificent and invisible world of microbes in the gut to the healthy growth of infants and children?
Their hypothesis was that the healthy growth of infants and children is linked to proper assembly of this community of microbes.
So their big question is: With an astronomical number of interactions going on in the gut, how can we understand the connections and conversations going on in there?
To answer this question, Gordon and his team started working with sterile mice….
Jeffrey Gordon: 02:38
…where we would take germ-free animals, animals reared in environments where there was no microbes. And initially, one at a time, possible members of the human gut, microbial community, their microbiota,
Julie Gould: 03:01
They could build complexity. First inputting one member, then another, in an organized and defined way to start understanding the dialogue going on in there,
Jeffrey Gordon13:05
It became apparent that nutrient-sharing relationships are probably very important as a foundation of mutually-beneficial relationships, symbioses that existed in the gut.
Julie Gould: 13:11
As they started connecting the dots between animal models and human health and disease Gordon and his team wondered…
Jeffrey Gordon: 03:18
Gee,it might be a wonderful thing to start thinking about the impact of the gut microbiota on nutritional status, and particularly as the gut microbiota developed, what effects might have on growth,
Julie Gould: 03:32
They wanted to work with someone who was an expert in child under-nutrition and who lived in an area where the burden of disease was great.
Jeffrey Gordon: 03:39
And most importantly, where there was profound trust between the mothers at that locale and the health care providers, so that we could do studies.
So that came about from a magical meeting at the NIH where I met Tahmeed Ahmed.
Tahmeed Ahmed: 04:04
My name is Tahmeed Ahmed, and I’m Bangladeshi. I am a medical doctor. And I'm also a medical scientist working at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b).
Julie Gould: 04:21
Dr. Ahmed has been working at the icddr,b for about 36 years, and is now also the executive director there. Since he started his job at the icddr,b Dr Ahmed has been studying malnutrition,
Tahmeed Ahmed: 04:35
When the body is unable to find these right nutrients, you know, growth falters. And this faltering of growth is called malnutrition.
And this malnutrition can affect children. It can affect adults in low and middle income countries like Bangladesh. Most often, we come across children and women who suffer from this wretched condition.
Julie Gould: 05:09
Just over 10 years ago, Gordon and Ahmed were together at a conference.
Tahmeed Ahmed: 05:13
We were taking breakfast together, early in the morning. And we were chatting. And I was asking him questions about his work on overweight, and then the work that he had done in Malawi.
And then I suggested that “Look, the kind of disease, under-nutrition, that I see is just opposite to what you see in the United States and other developed countries.
“But you are also working on gut microbiota. Why not we work together and see what we can do for malnutrition, undernutrition?”
Jeffrey Gordon: 05:25
And the shared journey began, looking at the hypothesis: “Is there a normal definable program of microbial community assembly and healthy children living in Bangladesh or in other sites? Was this program perturbed? And was that perturbation if it didn't exist, causally related to the pathogenesis of undernutrition?”
So that is where we are trying to give our best gift of attention to over the last more than decade of exploration.
Julie Gould: 06:27
At that time, Dr. Ahmed was working on a clinical trial in Dhaka testing two different types of treatment on children with severe malnutrition.
And Gordon readily agreed to work with this trial to study the gut microbiota involved.
Tahmeed Ahmed: 06:40
So as part of this study, we first went to the slums in Dhaka City. And we looked at children who are apparently healthy. Not all children in slums happen to be malnourished, you also come across children who are very malnurished. So we took the stool samples, and we did the tests, using sophisticated DNA techniques in Jeff’s lab at St. Louis.
And we then, you know, created the library in well-nourished children. And then, we went on to study children with severe malnutrition admitted to our hospital. We then compared the gut microbiota profile of these two group of children. And we came up up with many important conclusions. One is that the gut microbiota is immature in children with malnutrition.
And later, we showed that this immaturity of the gut microbiota is actually the cause, underlying cause of malnutrition.
Julie Gould: 08:04
This collaboration has continued for about a decade now. And even though the two collaborators live several time zones apart, they make it work.
Tahmeed Ahmed: 08:12
We are distanced apart, many many 1000s of miles away. But you know, we meet almost every week now. And this is on the Zoom platform. We never think that you know, that it has to be very formal. Because we have been working so closely together, all of us, we are part of the same team.
Julie Gould: 08:35
When speaking to both Professor Gordon and Dr Ahmed, this concept of team and teamwork is crucial to how they make this international collaboration successful, and how they operate locally.
Jeffrey Gordon: 08:50
And I am so grateful for the remarkable group of students who come to the lab to share their lives with me, each embarking on a journey that's very unique, reflecting their hopes, their dreams, their previous life experiences, their existing strengths, as well as their aspirations for acquiring new capabilities and perspective.
They've also done something I think that’s really critical, not only to the journey of the lab, and our relationships with one another, but also our connections to our colleagues in Bangladesh.
And that’s a shared belief that discovery and innovation occurs, is born, in a very caring, very supportive and respectful and trusting environment, so that we could share ideas with one another, and at the same time not be afraid to say “I don't understand.”
Julie Gould: 09:47
The grant money that Professor Gordon and his collaborators have received will be used to further strengthen this international collaboration by developing local capacity and empowering people
Jeffrey Gordon: 09:57
The ability to evolve and deploy technology at a site where the burden of disease is great, the training of very talented individuals and they become familiar with these tests, to create durable programs so that these capacities can be deployed for a variety of different problems.
But also to empower young individuals, once they acquire this knowledge, to be able to pursue that, so their careers can mature and develop in the locales where they practice their science.
Ahmeed Tahmeed: 10:32
It means that some of the work that can be done in Dhaka should be done in Dhaka, by Bangladeshi researchers. And these are the young researchers.
Jeffrey Gordon: 10:44
People from the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research can come to Washington University for six months at a time and take a deep dive into the experimental and computational pipelines that we use.
Tahmeed Ahmed: 11:00
But then, we also thought that it should be two-way, not just a one-way track. So we will also have postgraduate students in Jeff’s lab. They will come to Dhaka and they will also work alongside our researchers in trying to understand what it is like to look at the patients.
Because they in St Louis, they are doing the assays, the DNA work, the sophisticated work, but then it would be great for them to look at the conditions in which the patients live slip, and how do the patient’s look like you know. So I believe that that’s going to empower them more.
Julie Gould: 11:48
Professor Gordon strongly believes in working in a supportive environment where each person, whether in Dhaka, Bangladesh, or in his lab at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, feel safe enough to take the chance to develop themselves to the best of their abilities.
Jeffrey Gordon: 12:06
Fundamentally, it begins with the gift of attention and trying to look at the world through another person's eyes, understand what inspires them, how they view their needs.
Another way of saying that is, what do they feel are environments that bring out aspects of their being that they value most?
What are their vulnerabilities? And can they give voice to that so that we can create questions together for them to pursue, that they have ownership of, that they have joy pursuing, and where they will feel supported, not only in terms of the relationship they have with me, but their relationship with the community of people that surround them.
Julie Gould: 12:52
Ultimately, though Professor Jeffrey Gordon, thanks his team for this.
Jeffrey Gordon: 12:57
They fashioned an environment and formed support for one another that I think really underpins the foundations for interdisciplinary research and for human flourishing, just the idea that there’s a shared spirit. There’s a shared hope, trust, there’s a kindness and generosity and a shared sense of purpose that equals the sheer joy.
Julie Gould: 13:43
As mentioned earlier, this episode of the Nature Careers Working Scientist podcast was sponsored by the Global Grants for Gut Health, a grant program for investigator-initiated research into the human gut microbiota, supported by Yakult and Nature Portfolio.
Learn more about the global grants for gut health, including details of the latest funding call at https://www.guthealth-grants.com/
