# Divergent Functional and Metabolic Development of the Infant Microbiome

> **NIH NIH P01** · UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA · 2022 · $490,093

## Abstract

BEAMS ABSTRACT: Project 2
Diminished early life environmental microbial exposures and perturbations to the infant gut microbiome are
related to asthma outcomes in childhood. Mexican populations resident in Nogales, Mexico exhibit a four-fold
decrease in childhood asthma rates compared with a population of comparable ancestry resident seventy miles
away across the border in Tucson, Arizona. Our preliminary data has demonstrated that these cross-border
populations experience significantly distinct microbial exposures in their environment (house dust and drinking
water) and that the stool microbiota of 1-month old infants raised in these environments are differentially enriched
for immunomodulatory bacterial genera. This suggests that microbial differentials in environmental and personal
microbiomes relate to the cross-border disparity in asthma rates observed in this population. BEAMS proposes
to comprehensively examine a population of Mexican mother-infant dyads resident in Nogales, Mexico or
Tucson, Arizona and their environment in early life to determine how differences in environmental, maternal and
infant microbial composition and function relate to asthma disparities in this cross-border population. Project 2
will examine at high-resolution the functional attributes of the microbiome of a subset of paired maternal prenatal
(vaginal and stool) and infant gut (longitudinally collected stool) samples collected from 200 mother-infant dyads,
as well as their paired house dust and water samples using shotgun metagenomics, RNA-Seq and
metabolomics. The study will examine functional differentials in inherited microbes and gut microbiome
development in cross-border communities that relate to T2 wheezing at age 2 years (a robust predictor of asthma
in later childhood) and immune development. These efforts aim to identify environmental, maternal and infant
microbiome attributes that promote protection against asthma within Mexican populations.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10457923
- **Project number:** 5P01AI148104-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
- **Principal Investigator:** Susan Veronica Lynch
- **Activity code:** P01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $490,093
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-07-10 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10457923

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10457923, Divergent Functional and Metabolic Development of the Infant Microbiome (5P01AI148104-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10457923. Licensed CC0.

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