At the time of her doctoral research, little was known about the
microbiome (genes of the bacteria, archaea, microscopic eukaryotes, and viruses interacting in an environment) of the gut and the
symbiotic relationship between host and bacteria. Her thesis delineated the
UniFrac algorithm which has allowed researchers to visualize the relationships between microbial communities in the human gut, how they interact, and how they might be related to specific diseases. Lozupone's work, detailed in a 2012 paper which appeared in
Nature entitled "Diversity, Stability and Resilience of the Human Gut Microbiota", was noted for its attempt to analyze what is the "normal" bacterial state in the human gut. By approaching the gut as an ecosystem, scientists are then able to factor in the effects of lifestyle, diet, health status which might change the bacterial makeup present in the
gastrointestinal tract. According to
Thomson Reuters, Lozupone was one of the most cited researchers in the world in 2014. One article that may have influenced that claim is her 2012 article, "Diversity, stability and resilience of the human gut microbiota," published in
Nature. Data published by
Nature show that this article ranked in the 99th percentile of nearly 200,000 articles published around the same time. Her most recent work, released in 2024, provided evidence that an agrarian diet improves metabolic health of HIV positive males. This research connected the alteration of diet that impacted the microbiome, proving that the microbiome has an influence on health. ==Selected work==