Close
###########################################################
SYMPOSIUM ON EVOLUTION AND ECOLOGY OF MICROBIAL COMMUNITIES
###########################################################
INVITES SPEAKERS:
Peer Bork (EMBL, Heidelberg)
Nancy Moran (University of Texas, Austin)
ORGANIZERS:
Florent Lassalle (University College London, UK) florent.lassalle@ucl.ac.uk
Mathieu Groussin (MIT, Cambridge, USA) mgroussi@mit.edu
DATE AND LOCATION:
12-16 July 2015
Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2015 Meeting - Vienna, Austria
For more information on the meeting see here: http://smbe2015.at/
SYMPOSIUM DESCRIPTION:
The study of microbial community ecology and evolution has been
advancing at a rapid pace for a few years, benefiting from the
possibility to analyze metagenomic sequence data. Microbial communities
in diverse environments have been characterized, with major impact on
our understanding of microecology and human health. However, the complex
nature of a microbial community makes it challenging to identify the
ecological and evolutionary processes driving its multi-level structure.
A community comprises dozens to hundreds of species interacting
together, sharing or competing for goods, cooperating for or
antagonizing in niche occupation. It can also be seen as a loosely
compartmentalized gene pool structured by the pattern of genetic
exchange among its members. These species and genetic interactions
evolve in time along with the surrounding environment. Revealing the
evolutionary processes linking these aspects of microbiomes is critical
to understanding how microbes adapt to various environments and, in
turn, how environments are impacted. This symposium aims at presenting
new empirical results on evolution and ecology of microbial communities
and the dynamics of their taxonomic composition, genomic diversity and
functional repertoires. Methodological advances allowing us to infer
these dynamics will also be presented.