Crystal Johnson
Oklahoma State University, OK·Microbiology & Immunology
Obesity is a leading cause of death worldwide and drives conditions such as metabolic syndrome and heart disease. In 2024, Oklahoma ranked 49th in overall obesity metrics.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
obesity
gut microbiome
Christensenella
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Determine how Christensenella reduces obesity by confirming the role of the appetite and fullness hormones GLP-1 and PYY, and use transcriptomics to find genes behind its partnership with the archaeon Methanobrevibacter smithii.
- Test whether the bacteria-archaea partnership is required for Christensenella-driven obesity reduction in living animals, using a pig model fed a westernized diet.
- Recover new strains of Christensenella and Methanobrevibacter from mammalian sources using culturomics, a large-scale microbial culturing approach.
More about the research
The trillions of microbes in the gut, known as the gut microbiome, differ between lean people and people with obesity. One bacterial family, Christensenellaceae, is enriched in lean individuals. In mice, fecal transplants supplemented with Christensenella promoted weight loss even on a high-fat diet. Across human studies, Christensenella sits at the center of a network of microbes that tend to occur together. That network includes Methanobrevibacter smithii, the most common archaeon in the human gut. Archaea are single-celled microbes from a domain of life separate from bacteria. Both microbes are linked to early life: Christensenella is enriched in vaginally delivered infants, and Methanobrevibacter is found in breast milk. Yet little is known about how archaea and bacteria cooperate in the gut. This kind of cooperation, in which one partner feeds on another's products, is called syntrophy.
Why it matters
Obesity and related metabolic disorders affect populations broadly and are especially common in Oklahoma. By showing how the gut microbes Christensenella and Methanobrevibacter work together to influence appetite hormones and energy balance, this work could inform microbiome-targeted therapies, such as beneficial bacteria given as treatments. These therapies may help reduce obesity and related cardiometabolic disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Dongmin Liu
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Pharmacology
Characterize the anti-diabetic and anti-obesity effects of daily oral elenolic acid in diet-induced obese and db/db diabetic mice, using metabolic profiling and euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamps to measure insulin sensitivity.
Emily Davenport
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Genetics
Identify links between host genes and the bacteria and archaea living directly on gut and lung mucosal surfaces, by pairing microbial sequencing with single-cell RNA sequencing of the adjacent host tissue.
Arpita Bose
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology
Characterize how a phototrophic bacterium and a methanogenic archaeon grow together as a syntrophic pair, defining the co-metabolic activities each partner contributes under anoxic conditions.
The school
Oklahoma State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $254M a year on research, 238 research doctorates a year.
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