Date of Submission

Spring 2020

Academic Program

Biology

Project Advisor 1

Gabriel Perron

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Cannabidiol or CBD, one of the cannabinoids derived from Cannabis Sativa, has recently peaked public interest because of its potential use as a treatment for ailments ranging from irritable bowel syndrome to epilepsy. As medicinal use of CBD becomes more and more popularized, there is a growing need for research on how CBD products directly affect humans. Claims that CBD is helpful for improving gut health, and is able to reduce inflammation in the gut have been supported by recent studies. Existing research has shown that the endocannabinoid system can directly affect the gut microbiome, and gram-negative bacteria are resistant to CBD. While there has been some research on CBDs microbial interactions, there is a lack of research on the direct effect of CBD on the gut microbiota. We set out to investigating the effects of CBD on the gut microbiome, using zebrafish larvae, which have been established as useful model organisms for microbiome and Cannabis research. Using a metagenomics approach, we analyzed 16S rRNA sequence data to test the effect of cannabidiol exposure on alpha and beta diversity. We show that cannabidiol treatments did not have an impact on overall diversity or species abundance, but did effect the microbial community structure of larval zebrafish microbiomes.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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