Nicholas Christakis, Yale’s Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science, will lead a new project that explores the relationship between face-to-face social networks and the human microbiome.
The Microbiome Biology and Social Networks in the Developing World project, which began Jan. 1 and will continue through December 2022, is funded by a $3.54 million grant from the Zurich-based NOMIS Foundation. Collaborators on the project include Edo Airoldi of Temple University and Ilana Brito of Cornell University.
The project will merge human genomic, microbiome, and social network data to examine important relationships among our own genes, the organisms living in our bodies, and our social connections to one another. In addition, conducting this study within an existing research project will enable further inquiry into how these phenomena are related to the socioeconomic and health data of thousands of people within a social network in rural Honduras.
