Scientists have come to a better comprehension of the vital nature of fungi in our gut due to recent technological advancements. Dr. Iliev explains what this means for our digestive system anatomy and discusses: Why the alteration of fungal microbiota, or mycobiota, populations with bowel inflammation matters. Why interactions between fungi and bacteria in our digestive system anatomy connects to bowel disease. How a single cell mutation might be a major factor in Crohn's Disease. Dr. Iliyan Iliev is Assistant Professor of Immunology in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Iliev is a mucosal immunologist and focuses on the interrelation between mycobiota and bowel disease. They've discovered that the fungi's ability, or lack of, to balance with gut bacteria may be an important component in the source for these diseases. Better understanding this interaction as well as the importance of primer functions of various cells may lead to treatments. In fact, research into primers lead the way to the fungi discovery. A fungal message was detected while investigating different primer types. Later the ability to do deep gene sequencing enabled scientists to return to this signal and locate a diverse population of gut fungi as a crucial part of our digestive system anatomy. Dr. Iliev's lab works to understand this diversity, cataloging the different types of fungi and associating them with types of disease. This gut fungi emphasis could provide treatment for such inflammatory bowel diseases. See the Ilieve Lab page at Weill Cornell Medicine for more information: https://ilievlab.weill.cornell.edu/