Lauren Peterson, a scientist at The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Farmington, Connecticut, is one of an elite group of scientists looking at the gut microbiology of athletes. Petersen, who founded the Athlete Microbiome Project, is specifically researching cyclists.
Her connection to the topic is intimate. Petersen contracted
Lyme Disease at 11 years old. She was on and off antibiotics and generally sick for more than a decade. Then, as she was finishing her PhD, she gave herself a fecal transplant from a competitive cyclist.