Aleksey Maro

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Notre Dame, funded through the Society of Science, working with the Archie Lab and the Amboseli Baboon Research Project.

What goes in must come out. I am interested in how microbes within the food that we eat influence our gut microbiome, our health, social life, and even cognition over evolutionary time. In particular, I am interested in the role of fermentation, naturally occurring within fruits and many other dietary items. Humanity’s ancestral consumption of fermenting fruits was the likely origin of our predisposition to intentional alcohol production in more recent epochs. As a proxy for how our remote ancestors might have lived, I have previously investigated the natural ecology of this ancient fruit-primate relationship in wild chimpanzees, where I estimated that they on average consumed around 1–2 standard drinks per day by human standards. At the University of Notre Dame, I am working with Dr. Elizabeth Archie’s Lab and the Amboseli Baboon Research Project (ABRP) in Kenya to investigate how variation in the diet, and the microbial composition of what is ingested, is connected to the gut microbiome and its core functions in wild savanna baboons (Papio cynocephalus and P. anubis). To what extent are the molecular tools for digesting and metabolizing the fruit already present within free-living microbes inside the fruit pulp? Does the presence or absence of certain microbes attract or deter consumers? To this end, I get to leverage the massive ABRP fecal microbiome dataset from hundreds of baboons over many years, which is physically stored at the University of Notre Dame. These samples have already been barcoded for diet, so we can directly compare what the baboons were eating with what’s in their gut. In Kenya, I will study the baboon diet directly in the field using live culturing and nanopore genomic sequencing methods. Understanding how baboons survive and thrive on the savanna can reveal details about our own origins and potential targets for health research.

I recently completed my Ph.D. Dissertation with Robert Dudley and the Dudley Lab in the Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley. The title of my thesis was: Towards a wild fermentation ecology: alcohol within floral nectar and the frugivorous diet of chimpanzees. All chapters have been published (see Publications).

[Global press coverage and media interviews]

[Recordings of my seminars and lectures]

[Curriculum Vitae]

amaro@nd.edu