Seminar of the Department of Microbiology
Top-down and bottom-up exploration of the human gut microbiome
05.05.2022, 11:00 - Join online
Abstract
The human gut microbiome is a complex ecosystem that is essential for our health and well-being. Here, I will present both top-down and bottom-up approaches to explore this fascinating ecosystem. Large-scale sequencing of faecal samples is a widely used top-down approach that has brought new insights into the composition and dynamics of the human gut microbiome but that has struggled to identify mechanisms behind key observations such as the existence of alternative community types. A complementary approach is to study synthetic human gut communities in controlled conditions in vitro, which allows unraveling how different metabolic strategies of gut bacteria lead to the observed community dynamics. The combination of top-down and bottom-up exploration is needed to better understand human gut microbial community dynamics.