June Louise Round
University of Utah, UT·Microbiology & Immunology
The human gut is home to trillions of microbes, and most research has focused on its bacteria. Yet the gut also holds viruses, and most of them are bacteriophages, or phages: viruses that infect bacteria, not human cells.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
virome
bacteriophages
microbiome
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Catalog which commensal viruses in stool from healthy humans are bound by mucosal IgA and IgG antibodies, by purifying and sorting antibody-coated DNA and RNA viral particles.
- Characterize serum antibody reactivity against gut-resident viral communities using paired blood and stool samples from the same healthy individuals, to reveal viruses of interest.
- Determine how antibodies control human gut viral communities, using germ-free mice lacking adaptive immunity or IgA that are colonized with healthy human microbiota.
More about the research
Phage communities change in diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and obesity. Even so, little is known about them in healthy people. The lab's earlier work showed that phages can drive immune system development even though they cannot infect mammalian cells. That makes them an overlooked influence on immunity. This project asks which gut viruses the immune system recognizes in healthy humans.
Why it matters
Studies of which gut bacteria the immune system targets have uncovered disease-linked microbes, biomarkers and immune triggers. Doing the same for gut viruses could identify new viruses that matter for human health. These could include viruses relevant to conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease or obesity. The resulting data resource could support future mechanistic studies of how the immune system keeps peace with resident viruses.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Meng Wu
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Identify the gut stromal cell populations that fail to produce the immune signals needed for B-cell development and antibody production, using germ-free mice colonized with gut microbes from human donors who responded poorly to oral cholera vaccine.
Carrie Cowardin
University of Virginia, VA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether gut microbiota from stunted human infants drive dysregulated intestinal immunity, using germ-free mice colonized with stunted or healthy infant microbiota whose pups are weaned onto a nutrient-deficient diet.
Matthew Olm
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Microbiology & Immunology
Identify ecological forces linked to diverging infant microbiomes through multi-omics profiling of global infant groups. Measure breast milk sugars (HMOs), diet, maternal IgA antibody binding, keystone microbes, and whether microbes come from the mother.
The school
University of Utah: 58 labs on PI Pages, $789M a year on research, 366 research doctorates a year.
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