Researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa have been awarded $10.7 million by the National Institutes of Health to study how human health is affected by microbiomes — collections of microbes, such as bacteria, viruses and their genes.

Microbiomes “contribute in big ways to human health and wellness,” the NIH says on its website. “They protect us against pathogens, help our immune system develop, and enable us to digest food to produce energy.” Some microbes alter environmental substances in ways that make them more toxic, while others make environmental substances less harmful, the NIH said.

The latest UH grant from the NIH Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence, or COBRE, is considered a phase 2 grant. Five years ago a $10.4 million phase 1 grant was given to the UH Manoa Integrative Center for Environmental Microbiomes and Human Health for research that led to establishment of field sites on several islands, 25 publications and more than $22 million in extramural investigator grants, a UH news release said.

The phase 2 grant supports four research projects: a study of foodborne pathogens and how they establish on crops; research on microbiome interactions with the hormone leptin in fruit fly obesity; a study of the interaction between microbiome and disease in fruit fly models; and factors influencing the microbiome in women and its role in preterm births.

Their researchers, respectively, are Mohammad Arif, an assistant researcher in plant and environmental protection sciences; Ellinor Haglund, an assistant professor of chemistry; Andrea Jani, an assistant researcher at Pacific Biosciences Research Center; and Corrie Miller, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health.

More than 30 UH Manoa faculty have participated or are currently COBRE project leaders, core leaders or mentors. Associate professor Anthony Amend, with the Pacific Biosciences Research Center, is the phase 2 principal investigator.

Such grants also have broad economic benefits, UH officials said.

“Our Phase 1 investigators were awarded more than $22 million in external grants, mostly from federal agencies, and that all comes back to the state in terms of salaries and expertise,” Amend said. “It’s really a boon for, not just the university, but for the people of Hawaii as well.”