The Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy (IGSP) and the Duke Center for the Genomics of Microbial Systems (GeMS) awarded a seed grant to fund a new collaboration with the Rawls lab to study how bacteria have evolved to live inside our intestines. Gut bacteria play a fundamental role in our ability to digest food and resist infection. Many now think that being able to manipulate the gut microbiome may have therapeutic benefits. To better understand how bacteria thrive in the gut, this multidisciplinary effort combines new approaches for culturing symbiotic bacteria, high-throughput genomics, and computational techniques. As a result of this effort, we hope to gain better control over the gut bacteria, which is a step towards our long term goal of manipulating those communities for therapeutic benefit.