Over the past 20 years, the science around the diet, gut microbiome and health relationships has continued to grow. While there have been several publications addressing methods for human research in this area, the extent to which “best practices” have been articulated in this field is not known. In addition, there are many publications focused on best practices in human nutrition research generally, but the degree to which these are applicable to gut microbiome studies versus needing additional or different guidance has not been explored.
The IAFNS Nutrition for Gut Health Committee is interested in advancing best practices for human nutrition gut microbiome research. Noting that the literature was populated with some of this information from different investigators, the Committee thought a useful starting point would be to pull together the existing knowledge with an eye toward areas of general agreement and gaps. In doing so, the Committee reached out to the Nutritional Microbiology Research Interest Section of the American Society for Nutrition for partnership. Two of the members, Dr. Phil Karl and Dr. Tatiana Diacova, expressed interest in the project. Dr. Diacova, who at that time was a PhD candidate at UC Davis, took on the majority of this work to complement her studies in Nutritional Biology. We asked Dr. Diacova, now a Postdoctoral Researcher at UC Los Angeles, what she learned from the experience and how it changed her thinking.
Dr. Diacova: This was a completely transformative experience for me as a budding independent researcher. This project allowed me to gain relevant skills in all the stages of manuscript preparation starting from protocol development all the way to addressing feedback from peer reviewers. This experience boosted my self-confidence as a researcher and independent scientific thinker.
To see more questions and answers on the effort by Dr. Diacova, click here.