Laura Carroll awarded “Future Research Leader” grant – receives 15 million sek to resolve microbiomes at the single-cell level

Laura Carroll, Assitant Professor at the Department of Clinical Microbiology and fellow at SciLifeLab’s Data Driven Life Science, DDLS, in Umeå

ImageHans Karlsson

I’ve never been anywhere as welcoming and collaborative, and it’s this environment that makes exciting research like this possible.

Laura Carroll is one of 16 researchers chosen from 213 applicants to receive this competitive award, which provides SEK 15 million over five years, including leadership training, to support promising research leaders.  
 
“I'm excited because I've never had any formal leadership training before, so I'm looking forward to learning new ideas, techniques, and skills,” says Laura Carroll, Assistant Professor at the Department of Clinical Microbiology, and fellow via SciLifeLab’s Data Driven Life Science, DDLS. 
 
Her project, “Maximising microbiome resolution with singel-cell genomics”, aims to provide microbiologists with methods to sequence the genome of every single cell in a microbiome, allowing them to determine which species or strains are present, and which genes they carry, at maximum resolution.

“It is a fundamental question in microbiome research, but answering this question is really challenging, as current state-of-the-art methods lack resolution and/or throughput,” Laura Carroll explains.  
 
To overcome some of the challenges, her group, together with collaborators at Umeå University, including Johan Henriksson’s group, recently developed a new method that can produce up to a million bacterial genomes from a single sample. This method, described in a preprint, provides unprecedented resolution, and could transform how microbiomes are studied.

Laur Carroll collaborates with Johan Henriksson's research group in her project. 

ImageMattias Pettersson

“Now, with the support from SSF, we'll be taking our method to the next level by developing novel computational methods to make sense of massive amounts of data.” 
 
It is her hope that the methods developed through this project will allow microbiologists to gain maximum-resolution insights into microbiomes, which could improve infectious disease treatment and surveillance, as well as lead to the developement of microbiome-based diagnostics and therapeutics.

“This grant comes at the perfect time,” she adds. “Until now, our teams have made tremendous progress by pooling our resources, but to take this work to the next level, we need to grow. SSF’s support will allow us to expand our team and advance our methods even further.”

Laura Carroll highlights the collaborative atmosphere at Umeå University as key to the success of this project: “I love how collaborative Umeå University researchers are! I’ve never been anywhere as welcoming and collaborative, and it’s this environment that makes exciting research like this possible.”