Finding Catalysts of Gut Reactions: The Gut Microbiota in Disease Onset and Treatment

About this event

The Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences is excited to have Dr. Elizabeth share her work. Here is a brief bio on Dr. Bess.

Brief Bio: Elizabeth N. Bess is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular Biology & Biochemistry at the University of California, Irvine. Professor Bess received her B.S. degree from the University of Utah in Biological Chemistry in 2009. In 2015, she earned her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Utah, working with Professor Matt Sigman to develop methods for mathematically describing and predicting outcomes of chemical reactions. As a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) postdoctoral fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation, Professor Bess conducted research in the microbiology lab of Professor Peter Turnbaugh at the University of California, San Francisco (2015–2018). There, she discovered how gut bacteria convert molecules abundant in plant-rich diets to new molecules that have anti-breast cancer effects and traced this metabolic process using gnotobiotic mice.

In her independent lab at UC Irvine, the heart of Bess Lab research is creating molecularly detailed blueprints linking gut microbiota function to human health. Specifically, Bess Lab research is revealing the gut microbiome’s role in onset and treatment of Parkinson’s disease, digestion of dietary lignin fiber, and modulation of the effectiveness of anti-breast cancer drug tamoxifen. Her research team’s goal is to enable better prediction and prevention of disease by accounting for the uniqueness of each person’s gut microbiome.