Student Profile: Mary Lally

Research Summary
While antibiotics combat bacterial infections, they reduce the resiliency of the microbiome and put hosts at more risk for secondary infections. Most patients with Clostridioides difficile infections report using an antibiotic in the prior three months. The increased incidence of C. difficile colonization following antibiotic use highlights the importance of the microbiome in health. Among other roles, the microbiome trains the host immune system and engages in both lipid and carbohydrate metabolism. When antibiotics disrupt the host-microbe relationship, they open niches for potentially harmful microbial species to expand and alter essential host processes.  Despite the connection among antibiotics, the microbiome, and health, there is little research that differentiates between an antibiotic’s local effects on the microbiome and the systemic, immunological effects in the host. My research will investigate how oral and systemic antibiotic introduction alter the microbiome, the immune response, and both host and microbial metabolites. I hope to elucidate the potential on- and off-target effects of antibiotics and contribute to our understanding of how antibiotics affect the host through the microbiome.