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Hawaii News

UH scientists ready to blaze a trail in microbiome quest

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CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM

UH researcher Margaret McFall-Ngai shows off the native Hawaiian bobtail squid that has helped her and her colleagues discover how animals and their microbes interact.

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CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM

Margaret McFall-Ngai, seen here at the University of Hawaii Pacific Biosciences Research Center’s Kakaako laboratory, is leading the university’s charge into a national exploration of the microbial world, enabled by recent advances in genetic sequencing. “The University of Hawaii, I feel, is poised to do something that no other place can do, and that is to study how the environment that we live in influences human health,” she said. “We are hands down the most diverse environment on Earth.”