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UNC Microbiome Core

The mission of the UNC Microbiome Core is to provide the research community with the facilities and expertise to characterize complex microbial communities and microbial interactions. The Core has state of the art instrumentation and extensively trained personnel that provide support from experimental design to data analysis

In The News

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    Microbes in Motion: How Flow and Stress Shape Microbiomes

    The UNC Microbiome Core invites you to our March First Friday Microbiome Seminar, featuring Dr. José M. Bruno-Bárcena (Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, NC State). Microbiomes Under Pressure: How Flow and Stress Shape Physiology in Packed-Bed Reactors Microbes don’t live in calm, static worlds. They live in motion—under flow, under stress, and in … Read more

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    Long Read Sequencing on the go!

    The Microbiome Core was awarded CFAC Fall RFA 2025 funding to develop long-read sequencing capabilities within the Core. These funds will boost our efforts to introduce a new long-read sequencing service that supports advanced research needs.

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    β(1–4) GOS and Gut Health: Enhancing Intestinal Integrity

    Yunan Hu, a PhD candidate in Dr. Azcarate-Peril’s laboratory, has recently published a manuscript in Food Bioscience demonstrating that the prebiotics β(1–4) GOS and humanized β(1–4) GOS strengthen intestinal barrier function. Using human primary colonic monolayers, the study shows that both compounds upregulate MUC2 and key tight-junction genes, thereby enhancing epithelial integrity. These findings were … Read more

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    The 2025 Jim Brown Award!

    Undergraduate researchers Nehal Devpura, Yoo Rim Lee, and Jin Ho Kim presented a poster at the North Carolina Branch–American Society for Microbiology (NC-ASM) conference highlighting their collaborative project, Prebiotic-Driven Dynamics of Lactobacillus Co-Cultures. The poster received the 2025 Jim Brown Award for Best Poster in recognition of this work.

Meet the Director

Dr. M. Andrea Azcarate-Peril

Director

M. Andrea Azcarate-Peril, PhD is Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director of the UNC Microbiome Core. She leads interdisciplinary efforts to advance microbiome research by providing investigators with expertise in study design, high-throughput sequencing, and integrative analysis of microbial communities across diverse clinical and experimental systems.

Dr. Azcarate-Peril’s research focuses on how prebiotics, probiotics, and rationally designed microbial consortia modulate host-associated microbiota and influence intestinal physiology and barrier function. Her work integrates molecular biology, functional genomics, and next-generation sequencing to elucidate mechanisms by which the gut microbiome shapes human health and disease.

With a background spanning microbial physiology and probiotic functional genomics, she has extensive experience translating microbiome science into clinically and nutritionally relevant applications.

Meet the Team


The North Carolina Microbiome Consortium

Mission and Goals

The North Carolina Microbiome Consortium provides the opportunity for interested and committed participants in academia, industry and the public to seek and share knowledge concerning the science of the microbiome. It seeks to foster interdisciplinary connections among scientists in diverse fields who share a common interest in microbial communities and with those who develop the tools needed to study and understand these communities. By coming together in this common pursuit of knowledge and the exchange of ideas, participants acknowledge the depth of local expertise; seek to establish North Carolina as a recognized leader in microbiome research and innovation, and aim to create greater opportunities for microbiome research and related industries in the state.

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Upcoming Events

Research

Beneficial Modulators of the Gut Microbiota

The overall goal of my research is to investigate the impact and mechanisms involved in the beneficial modulation of the gut microbiota by prebiotics (functional foods that stimulate growth of gut native beneficial bacteria) and probiotics (live bacteria that benefit their host). I specifically aim to develop prebiotic and probiotic interventions as alternatives to traditional treatments for microbiota-health related conditions, and to advance microbiota-based health surveillance methods.

Aljumaah MR, Bhatia U, Roach J, Gunstad J, Azcarate Peril MA. The microbiome, mild cognitive impairment, and probiotics: A randomized clinical trial in middle-aged and older adults. Clin Nutr. 2022 Nov;41(11):2565-2576. doi: 10.1016/j.clnu.2022.09.012. Epub 2022 Sep 28. PMID: 36228569.
Arnold JW, Roach J, Fabela S, Moorfield E, Ding S, Blue E, Dagher S, Magness S, Tamayo R, Bruno-Barcena JM, Azcarate-Peril MA. The pleiotropic effects of prebiotic galacto-oligosaccharides on the aging gut. Microbiome. 2021 Jan 28;9(1):31. doi: 10.1186/s40168-020-00980-0. Erratum in: Microbiome. 2021 Feb 26;9(1):56. PMID: 33509277; PMCID: PMC7845053.
Arnold JW, Whittington HD, Dagher SF, Roach J, Azcarate-Peril MA, Bruno-Barcena JM. Safety and Modulatory Effects of Humanized Galacto-Oligosaccharides on the Gut Microbiome. Front Nutr. 2021 Apr 7;8:640100. doi:10.3389/fnut.2021.640100. PMID: 33898497; PMCID: PMC8058378.

See recent research publications
Thank you for using the UNC Microbiome Core. Please acknowledge the Center for Gastrointestinal Biology and Disease (CGIBD P30 DK034987) and the UNC Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC P30 DK056350) in your publications