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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		How citizen scientists have helped microbiome research
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:01
	Publish Date:		2016-03-08 00:00:00
	Description:		Citizen science initiatives, in which members of the public contribute to a particular study, have become a very valuable asset to researchers. Dr. Rob Knight of the University of California, San Diego is one of them. Knight co-founded the American Gut Project, a crowdsourced, crowdfunded initiative in which anyone can contribute mouth, skin or gut samples from themselves, family members and dogs – all for microbiome sequencing. "The biggest value of these kinds of Citizen Science initiatives is that only with thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, can we get a full idea of what range of microbes and what range of microbiomes are out there. And in particular, what’s fascinating about this type of study, this is more traditional than NIH-funded studies, where you’re looking at a very specific population, with very specific criteria. And so we’re finding all kinds of configurations of the microbiome, out there in health people and also out there in people with different diseases that we would have had no idea existed. So we’re getting this tremendously expanded view of what kinds of microbiomes are out there."
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