# Uncovering the rules of gut microbiome strain transmission

> **NIH NIH R01** · ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAI · 2021 · $592,931

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
As biological scientists and even as members of an educated society, we all have some familiarity with the
fundamental concept that some aspects of our health are influenced by the set of genes we obtained from our
parents. We are also increasingly aware that our body surfaces, from our skin to our intestine, harbor microbial
strains that also influence our health. Given recent discoveries that many of these microbes are stably
colonized for decades and are acquired in early life, it is perhaps unsurprising that some proportion of the
microbes inside you right now were likely acquired from your parents and/or siblings when you were a child
and maintained in your intestine to this day, potentially influencing your health for these past many years. In
addition, we have yet to find clear evidence of a commensal gut microbial strain shared between two unrelated
individuals outside of extreme circumstances of microbial transfer such as fecal microbiota transplantation.
Given the extreme uniqueness of microbial strains at the whole genome level and the rarity of each strain
variant, fecal microbiota transplantation and familial-shared microbes represent the most efficient route to
accurately track and infer basic principles of microbial transmission and sharing. We feel this study will address
an important, unaddressed gap in our basic science knowledge of the gut microbiota. Just as tracking of
classical acute pathogenic microbes plays a key role in disease prevention and treatment, uncovering the
basic principles of microbial sharing and transmission for non-acute pathogen microbes could enable new tools
to quantify disease risk, to understand the importance of the familial microbial strain sharing in disease risk, to
manipulate the gut microbiota to improve health, and ultimately perhaps to enable the prevention of disease
through controlled monitoring or therapeutic addition of microbes that limit disease risk.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10086091
- **Project number:** 5R01DK124133-02
- **Recipient organization:** ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAI
- **Principal Investigator:** Jeremiah James Faith
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $592,931
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-01-20 → 2023-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10086091

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10086091, Uncovering the rules of gut microbiome strain transmission (5R01DK124133-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10086091. Licensed CC0.

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