Claudia Campenella, 31, works as a student support administrator at a UK university, and in her spare time she is a poo donor.
"Some of my friends think it is a bit weird or disgusting, but it doesn't worry me. It's very easy to donate and I just want to help with medical research. I'm glad to contribute."
Her faeces, teeming with "good" bugs, will be put into the bowel of a sick patient to help their poorly gut get better.
Claudia knows her donation is extremely useful - that is why she does it - but is her poo extra special?
Scientists believe some people's poo might contain an ideal mix of healing bacteria to fix gut diseases, making them super-donors.
Claudia says she wanted to become a donor because she had read that vegans might make particularly good candidates.
There's no good evidence that vegan poo is better than any other human faeces, but experts are exploring what might make a stool "super".
Dr O'Sullivan says: "We see transplants from super-donors achieve clinical remission rates of perhaps double the remaining average.
"Our hope is that if we can discover how this happens, then we can improve the success of faecal transplantation and even trial it for new microbiome-associated conditions like Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis and asthma."
Dr Jon Landy is a consultant gastroenterologist for West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust and helps to co-ordinate their faecal transplant unit.
He agrees with the idea of a super-donor, but says finding one could be tricky.
"We do not understand yet what makes a super-donor, or why," he said.
"We always make sure our donors are healthy and not carrying any disease, but we don't test all of their microbiome to see what that is like.
"These are the sorts of investigations that might need to be done."
Faecal bugs
Dr O'Sullivan's research, published in the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, suggests having lots of different microorganisms in your poo might be the advantage.
He says a larger number of species in the donor's stool has been shown to be one of the most significant factors influencing faecal transplantation outcome. And patients who respond well to the transplants develop a more diverse microbiome too.
But studies suggest success could also depend on how good a match the donor is for the patient.
And it might not only be which bacteria are present in the poo.
"Some cases of recurrent diarrheal infection have even been cured with transplants of filtered stool, that has had all the live bacteria filtered out but still contains DNA, viruses and other debris.
"These viruses could affect the survival and metabolic function of transplanted bacteria and other microbes," says Dr O'Sullivan.
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