Ecology, evolution and the microbiome: From mechanisms to translation

Melissa Chen, PhD 

(Postdoctoral Fellow, University of British Columbia)

Introduced by Ande Garretto

I have designed a novel high-throughput Arabidopsis plant growth system. Using this platform, I screened 100 wild A. thaliana rhizosphere isolates for beneficial or adverse effects on the host. Although wild isolates were collected from healthy plant hosts, I found two highly effective "pathogens" that kill plants in sterile conditions. My work explores why this pathogen does not kill in the wild; whether there exists any sympatric pathogen-protective isolate strains; and how the ecological niche differs between closely related strains of pathogenic and non-pathogenic rhizosphere bacteria. 

Seppe Kuehn, PhD 

(Center for the Physics of Evolving Systems, Department of Ecology and Evolution, The University of Chicago)

Introduced by James Tan 

The central focus of our group is understanding how community structure determines the emergent functional properties of microbiomes. Our ultimate goal is to learn from natural consortia the rules for designing, predicting, and controlling the behavior of these complex systems in contexts from soils to hosts and bioreactors.

Karthik Anantharaman, PhD 

(Assistant Professor of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Introduced by Alex Song

Dr. Anantharaman’s interdisciplinary research program uses a combination of computational, laboratory, and field-based experiments to understand the microbial and viral processes that underpin ecology and evolution in the environment, and in human health. With increasing recognition that viruses and phage are integral components of all microbiomes, his research group are developing and applying state-of-the-art computational approaches and model systems to drive the study of viral ecology and interactions in nature.