Fergus Shanahan MRIA, clinician–scientist
Research resulting from Professor Shanahan’s longstanding curiosity with the traditional lives of Irish Travellers has revealed that their microbiome challenges restrictive definitions of a healthy microbiome in a pluralistic society. The microbiome of Irish Travellers represents a model for exploring how modern life affects the microbiome, and its link with health and disease. Other collaborative work that Professor Shanahan undertook with a graphic artist led to a project that tells the story of microbes in the human gut from the perspective of the microbes themselves.
2025 marks twenty years since the RIA and the Higher Education Authority established the Gold Medals to acclaim Ireland’s foremost thinkers in the humanities, social sciences, and across the fields of science. The Gold Medals have become the ultimate accolade in scholarly achievement in Ireland. Since 2005, 34 medals have been awarded. In recognition of this important milestone, past RIA Gold Medals recipients have contributed blogs focusing on their research to our Members’ Research Series.
Fergus Shanahan MRIA, is a gastroenterologist and emeritus professor of medicine at University College Cork. He was awarded the RIA Gold Medal in the Life Sciences in 2016.
I have been privileged with a career in medicine that has allowed me to be a clinician–scientist, a teacher, a researcher, an entrepreneur and an author. I have also been privileged to work with talented people at home and abroad who helped me pursue my curiosities. In 2016 the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) awarded me a gold medal for achievements in life sciences.
For me, this award was more than an acknowledgement of my earlier research, it was a stimulus to undertake ambitious projects that I had been postponing and might never have undertaken without such encouragement. The best was yet to come!
As the foundation director of the APC Microbiome Ireland research centre, I had explored how personal microbes in the gut—collectively known as the microbiome—affect health and disease. My colleagues and I had achieved considerable recognition for studying the microbiome in a diversity of human cohorts, including the young and the elderly, professional athletes, and patients with inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. We thought we had assembled a comprehensive profile of the Irish microbiome. A longstanding curiosity with the traditional lives of Irish Travellers, however, led me to ask whether their distinct ethnicity and bygone ways might have influenced their microbiome. No one could have anticipated that we would discover that the Irish Travellers—an ethnic minority in a modern industrialised country—would have an ancient, non-industrialised type of microbiome.
The research was published in Nature Medicine (2020), accompanied by an editorial on its global implications for everyone; particularly all minority groups, including migrants. The microbiome of Irish Travellers challenges restrictive definitions of a healthy microbiome in a pluralistic society. Non-industrialised microbiomes are associated with a reduced risk of allergies and chronic immunological disorders, and lower rates of antimicrobial resistance. Moreover, the microbiome of Irish Travellers represents a model for exploring how modern life affects the microbiome, and its link with health and disease.
I have always been convinced that the quality of research is enhanced by engaging with the study population before undertaking the research. Our work with the Irish Travellers was a true collaboration, from design to execution. By engaging with the Travellers, we were better equipped to ask the right questions and to interrogate our data. Effective engagement has also fostered mutual trust and continuing research.
The gold medal award from the RIA invigorated me to complete several other projects that might otherwise have languished. One of these was to provide a public health service by explaining to society the significance of our work on the microbiome. How does one present microbiome science to all members of society, of varying ages and education levels? To address this challenge, I collaborated with a graphic artist, Laura Gowers, to tell the story of microbes in the human gut—from the perspective of the microbes themselves!
Since the best way to understand a microbe is to imagine how a microbe might think, we allow the microbes tell their story from the birth of their human host to the end of human life. Brevity, humour, and beautiful imagery are used to illustrate the majesty of the microbiome.
For those seeking more details, we present QR codes with the images, to direct viewers to additional online content. The result is a book for the lay public entitled Listen to your microbes—a graphic story from their perspective (Liberties Press, 2023), supplemented with online information at a YouTube channel of same name. We now plan to animate the imagery from the book to create a free, movie version of the story for everyone.
