A new study published in the journal Cell demonstrates that the American diet has nearly immediate effects on the human microbiome. The lead author of the article is Dan Knights of the University of Minnesota; as he tells the Washington Post, "We found that moving to a new country changes your microbiome. You pick up the microbiome of the new country and possibly some of the new disease risks that are more common in that country." In the case of people moving from Southeast Asia to the United States, their "gut diversity dropped to resemble the less-varied microbiomes in European Americans. At the same time, obesity rates spiked." Prof. Knights is renowned for his work using computational methods to better understand the human microbiome and develop precision medicine therapies. He was the commentator for a Consortium-sponsored lecture, "The Evolving Human Microbiome," by Alexander Khoruts, also of the University of Minnesota. Watch the video of that lecture here.