How microbes and mammals interact with Holly Ganz, Ph.D. Holly is a microbial ecologist who studies how microbes and mammals interact. After creating KittyBiome in 2015, Holly realized that digestive disorders are common in cats and dogs and that the gut microbiome plays an important role in some of these conditions. And so she founded AnimalBiome in 2016 in order to create better diagnostics and therapeutics for cats and dogs.