Kwon to Lecture on Development of Functional Probiotics via Microbiome Analysis

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Young Min Kwon

Young Min Kwon will present "Future Directions for Development of Functional Probiotics via Microbiome Analysis" at the Food Science Department at 3 p.m. Monday, Oct. 29, in Room D-2. Food science is located 2 miles north of the main campus at 2650 N. Young Ave.

Gut microbiota is an integral part of a human body in which it plays a crucial role for health, nutrition, immune response, and disease of the host. Therefore, understanding gut microbiota and finding effective ways to modulate gut microbiota is critical for health and disease prevention in humans as well as in food producing animals. Numerous studies have been conducted to gain understanding of the changes in gut microbiota that are correlated with various host and environmental factors. Traditionally probiotics have been isolated from genera Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium that were known for their general beneficial effects on the hosts, and further selected based on some desirable properties. However, a few recent studies have successfully established bacterial cause-effect relationships for a number of diseases or host conditions in animal models and humans, moving beyond microbiome studies seeking correlations. These advances in gut microbiome studies are slowly changing the way we develop probiotics for both human and animal applications to promote health and disease prevention with well-defined target effects on the host. In this presentation I will highlight a few examples of the successful researches that have paved new directions for development of the next-generation functional probiotics in the context of historical overview of the field.

Kwon is a microbiologist and currently a professor in the department of Poultry Science at the University of Arkansas. Kwon obtained his B.S. And M.S. degrees at Seoul National University, and Ph.D. degree at Texas A&M University (2000). He worked as a postdoctoral associate at USDA-ARS before he joined the University of Arkansas in 2002. Since then, he has established a distinct research program addressing various microbiology-related issues in food safety, and performance and disease in poultry using diverse approaches including genetics, functional genomics, next generation sequencing, microbiomics, and bioinformatics. Kwon's research program has been supported by NIH, USDA, ABI, and industries.