Jacob Allen
@JacobAllenPhD
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Associate Professor at UIUC | HK | Microbial Systems Initiative | Integrative Microbiota Physiology Lab
Champaign, IL
Joined April 2020
🚨Interested in why fermented foods may be important for health? Check out our new pub describing a class of microbial metabolites that are abundant in fermented foods and are modifiable to enhance food matrix bioactivity towards a key immune receptor-AhR https://t.co/PjdVkV9aPy
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Fun day with the lab celebrating @MikaelaK_RD PhD and arrival of new student Eleanor Eck! See Mikaela’s new lab coat with some fermented food “bling”… I focused on design, but I forgot about the size (an XXL… Mikaela is 5 ft 2… 😬). Correct size is inbound :)
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Check out the commentary I wrote on some cool new metagenomic workflows from Elisa Caffrey and the Sonnenburg lab. New ways to study fermented food microbes :).
journals.asm.org
Fermented foods have been part of the human diet for millennia, developed long before the scientific tools to analyze them. These foods are more than culinary traditions; they are living ecosystems,...
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My paper is out in @ScienceMagazine! We found a novel host defense strategy where #mitochondria, our domesticated microbes, compete with the intracellular pathogen #Toxoplasma for #folate. https://t.co/cDwlHtS4kB
science.org
As major consumers of cellular metabolites, mitochondria are poised to compete with invading microbes for the nutrients that they need to grow. Whether cells exploit mitochondrial metabolism to...
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What if we could use precision #microbiome editing in vivo to turn harmful gut microbes into allies against disease? We did it using #CRISPR Transposon & mobilome engineering. With @harriswangnyc and Tyler Perdue. In @natBME 👉 https://t.co/CbMkQH8FF7 👉
nature.com
Nature Biomedical Engineering - A self-transmissible CRISPR-associated transposase system encodes a nanobody payload to treat Shiga toxin infections.
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Just published! Congrats to lead authors, Dalia Perelman & Elisa Caffrey, on publishing "Unpacking Food Fermentation" in Advances in Nutrition. They explore what we know (and don’t) about fermented foods & why clearer definitions & research matter. 🔗
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Fermented foods have been consumed for millennia, valued for their extended shelf life, distinctive sensory properties, and potential health benefits. Emerging research suggests that fermented food...
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Led by the wonderful @elisacaetano__ ! Also thanks to all co-authors and collaborators like @DrHArmstrong, and all others (most not on X). Also this work not possible without @NIH @NIDDKgov funding! Much more to come when we post the 'official' pub :)
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🚨 New preprint from the lab! We identify a link between sympathetic nervous system activity, gut epithelial ROS, and colitis susceptibility in mice, offering a potential mechanism for the well-known connection between stress and IBD in humans 🔗
biorxiv.org
Psychological stress is a known risk factor for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but the mechanisms linking stress to worsened disease remain unclear. Because distinct stress paradigms activate...
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Huge congrats to the newly minted PhD @MikaelaK_RD! Mikaela helped pioneer our lab’s work on fermented foods and their impact on immune and metabolic pathways in the context of obesity. A joy to mentor and made my life easy. Well done, Dr. Kasperek! 🥳🎓🍽️
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What an awesome #GutBrainAxis symposium at #PNIRS2025! Huge honor to co-chair with @Eli_melb and share the stage with Frank Duca and Allen Lab’s own Elisa Caetano-Silva. Incredible science and even better people. Thanks to everyone who joined us!
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What are the ground truths on diet’s impact on the gut microbiome? There are surprisingly few, but the ones that exist are remarkably robust.
You(r gut microbes) are what you eat... Suzanne Devkota and colleagues describe the powerful role of diet in shaping the gut microbiome, particularly in the first year of life, and discuss the impact on human health and disease. https://t.co/wT7WwCCEMD
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Wonderful day at the park with the Antonson Developmental Neuroimmunology Lab! 🥰
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Proud of @ashleyotero01 for receiving the well-deserved C. Ladd Prosser award from @UofIllinois @NeuroscienceP! This award highlights “the best scientific achievement with the broadest significance in the discipline of neuroscience”. Congratulations! 🎉🐭🧠
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The archetype of the scientist who sacrifices everything might’ve been romantic 50 years ago when there weren’t alternative high paying jobs. If we won’t make science FUN, reduce bureaucracy, and make it easier to secure funding and publish, few will stay in academia.
Friends! The science that we love is under threat. World-wide there're forces seeking to make it corporate-like, focused on deliverables or even the enemy of society. Take a stand celebrate science & music! #theconferencetoendallconferences Register now: https://t.co/jQR4ida26u
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🤩 wow.
🚨Paper alert 🚨 Our latest research is out in @Nature! We reveal a surprising new role for the proteasome in innate immunity: generating antimicrobial peptides that can directly disrupt bacterial membranes. 🦠⚡ @WeizmannScience @Sys_Immunology 🔗 https://t.co/YzgdM8gsON 🧵👇
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Fun conversation! Thanks @BuckJoffrey for the invitation. @AHSIllinois
podcasts.apple.com
Podcast Episode · Longevity Roadmap · 02/24/2025 · 1h 2m
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Explain to me how this is improving “efficiency”?
About a month after Donald Trump took office as the 47th US president, almost all grant-review meetings remain suspended at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), preventing the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research from spending much of its US$47 billion
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