Corinne Maurice
About
Corinne Maurice aims to determine how bacteriophages – viruses that infect bacteria only – regulate the activity of the trillions of bacteria naturally present in the human gut.
As humans, we are walking microbial systems. Changes in the diversity and function of our microbial cells can have severe consequences for our health: obesity, diabetes, inflammatory bowel diseases, autism and allergies. Potentially, these conditions could be controlled or cured if we could regulate the metabolism of our gut bacteria.
Maurice pioneered the use of single cell tools and approaches developed in environmental microbiology and ecology to understand how bacteria respond to environmental changes and interact with their viral predators in the human gut. She demonstrated that common therapeutic drugs could rapidly alter bacterial activity – a possible explanation for different side effects to the same therapeutic treatments. Her lab is currently taking these approaches further, to link bacterial diversity to specific functions and explore how phage infection changes these patterns.
Awards
- Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Gut Microbial Physiology, 2015–20
- French MESR Doctoral Fellowship, 2006–09
- Mauritian – French Excellence Undergraduate Scholarship, 2001–06
Relevant Publications
Taguer, M., and C.F. Maurice. “The complex interplay of diet, xenobiotics, and microbial metabolism in the gut: implications for clinical outcomes.” Clin Pharmacol Ther 99, no. 6 (2016): 588–99.
Maurice, C.F. et al. “Marked seasonal variation in the wild mouse gut microbiota.” ISME J 9, no. 11 (2015): 2423–2434.
David, L.A. et al. “Diet rapidly and reproducibly alters the human gut microbiome.” Nature 505 (2014): 559–63.
Maurice, C.F., and P.J. Turnbaugh. “Quantifying the metabolic activities of human-associated microbial communities across multiple ecological scales.” FEMS Microbiol Rev 37, no. 5 (2013): 830–48.
Maurice, C.F., H.J. Haiser, and P.J. Turnbaugh. “Xenobiotics shape the physiology and gene expression of the active human gut microbiome.” Cell 152, no. 1–2 (2013): 39–50.