Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library
IBM has announced plans to study the human microbiome and its role in autoimmune diseases.
We still don’t fully understand how the bacteria inside us affect our health. IBM plans to find out more by analysing millions of bacterial genes, starting with those belonging to gut microbes. The hope is that this could shed light on type 1 diabetes, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
To speed up the project, IBM is crowdsourcing extra computing power, asking anyone with a desktop computer to help.
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Researchers from several US universities will oversee the analysis, with the goal of finding new ways to prevent or treat autoimmune disease.
IBM isn’t the only technology firm setting its sights on the microbiome. In April, Google’s health spin-off Verily launched a project aiming to collect genetic and microbiome data from 10,000 people in the US. Their aim is to better predict the onset of conditions like cancer and heart disease.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Microbe gene hunt”
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