The Manus Lab asks: how do early life environments become biologically embedded to shape human health? To answer this question, we leverage the microbiome as a system that is environmentally sensitive, shared across generations, and predictive of health outcomes. Our lab is particularly interested in the social transmission of microbes as a pathway through which early life environments “get under the skin” to shape health phenotypes. The lab’s interdisciplinary approach combines community-engaged fieldwork, multi-omics laboratory methods, and bioinformatics to generate new data that informs theories in human biology, biological anthropology, and evolutionary medicine.
We are in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC). Please send an email (see below) if you are interested in learning about opportunities to join the lab or collaborate.
Dr. Manus is an Assistant Professor at UNCC (incoming August 2026). She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Northwestern University and an MSc in Global Health from Duke University. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow in the THRiVE Discovery Lab at the University of Manitoba and an Assistant Professor at UT San Antonio. Her field-based research experience spans communities in South Africa, Madagascar, Mexico, the USA, and Ghana.
Let’s get in touch!
Email: mmanus3@charlotte.edu
Melissa B. Manus, PhD, MSc 