Jason Ridlon is helping find treatment strategies to improve human health and animal well-being. He studies gut microbiology, specifically the biochemistry and molecular biology of steroid and bile acid biotransformations by the gut microbiota. He is trying to understand how microbial metabolites promote gastrointestinal tract diseases such as liver and colorectal cancers, as well as essential hypertension. His laboratory has established pipelines for gut microbiome and transcriptome analysis, and they have performed genetic manipulation of E. coli, and Bacteroides vulgatus and identified genetic strategies for C. scindens. Ridlon is working on collaborative projects with Dr. Khazaie at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, as well as Dr. Gounari at University of Chicago that will allow the use of a gnotobiotic mouse model of colonic polyposis.
Ridlon earned his PhD in Anaerobic Microbiology from Virginia Commonwealth University. While there, he was a member of The Lipid Research Group, providing him close training with several world authorities on bile acid, steroid biosynthesis, and metabolism in humans.