Gut Microbiome in Chronic Pancreatitis

As a Master’s student eager to work on cutting-edge technologies, I chose to focus my thesis on gut microbiome research using Nanopore sequencing—an emerging platform that excited me deeply.

• My enthusiasm led me to successfully convince my thesis supervisor to invest in a Nanopore sequencer, which I then helped set up and optimize in the lab.
• I developed and refined protocols for DNA extraction, sample preparation, and sequencing, and implemented an end-to-end metagenomic pipeline using a newly configured Linux workstation.
• The project was a collaboration with a nearby hospital, where we collected and processed fecal samples from chronic pancreatitis patients.
• In collaboration with a gastroenterologist, we compared gut microbiome profiles from patients and healthy individuals to identify disease-associated microbial changes.

This project helped me develop both wet-lab and computational skills in microbiome research and laid the foundation for my future work in microbial ecology and bioinformatics.