Jonas Schluter

In the past I have worked on individual-based simulations of microbes that live in dense communities called "biofilms". I created a computer model of the human gut epithelium and simulated how microbes compete with each other in this environment. Understanding micrbial communities in the gut is crucial as they are key to our health and development. The explicit consideration of spatial structure in my models have led to some cool results; for example we have shown how the host's ability to choose one helpful species of microbes over other, less helpful ones may be amplified as a result of the particular spatial structure in the gut.