School of Public Health
Twin Cities
This project uses data that come out of an ongoing cohort study of mothers and infants focusing on the role of breastmilk and lactation in mediating maternal and infant health outcomes. The cohort study, based at the University of Minnesota, includes ~500+ healthy mother-infant dyads with stored biospecimens and a large quantity of clinical data. Being added to this is genome-wide DNA and RNA sequencing data, milk composition including milk metabolomics, HMOs, and microbiome, infant growth and development, and fecal microbiome data. The goal is to delve for the first time into the systems biology of human milk, and to define the correlational structures linking maternal health to the unique recipe that is her breast milk within the normal range of maternal health. MSI is needed in order to store and support analyses of these multi-omic datasets .