Understanding the Heterogeneity of Host-associated Microbial Communities

Prof. Lei Dai, from Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (China), will be discussing his most recent findings on ''Understanding the Heterogeneity of Host-associated Microbial Communities''

The realization that microbial communities, associated with virtually all multicellular organisms, have tremendous impact on their hosts’ health and development is considered one of the most important scientific discoveries in the last decade.

Prof. Dai will introduce his recent efforts to characterize the heterogeneity of host-associated microbiome in three different aspects:

1) Dynamics. There is growing evidence that baseline composition may be an important contributor to the personalized response of gut microbiome. Prof. Dai developed computational approaches to study key factors underlying the heterogeneity in microbiome dynamics.

2) Space. The spatial heterogeneity of microbial communities has been observed across different habitats, ranging from human gastrointestinal tract to plant rhizosphere. He developed in situ spatial analysis of microbiome at single cell resolution, which is crucial for elucidating the principles governing the assembly of microbiome.

3) Strain. The within-species functional heterogeneity has been increasingly recognized as an important factor in shaping the ecology and evolution of microbiome. He developed bioinformatics tools to infer strain-level composition and functional profiles from metagenomics data.

In summary, Prof. Dai developed novel methods to study the dynamical response, spatial structure and strain-level diversity of microbial communities. These methods will open up new dimensions to understand the complexity of microbiome and facilitate the precise engineering of microbiome.

Targeting Microbiota 2022 Congress
October 19-21, 2022 - Paris, France
www.microbiota-site.com