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Biological Physics Seminar: "Universal Dynamics of Human Microbial Ecosystems" | The Racah Institute of Physics

Biological Physics Seminar: "Universal Dynamics of Human Microbial Ecosystems"

Date: 
Thu, 14/01/201614:00-15:30
Location: 
Danciger B building, Seminar room
Lecturer: Dr. Amir Bashan
Affiliation: Harvard Medical School
Abstract:
The recent realization that human-associated
microbial communities play a crucial role in
determining our health and well-being, has led to
the ongoing development of microbiome-based
therapies such as fecal microbiota
transplantation. The microbial communities are
very complex and highly personalized
ecosystems, exhibiting a high degree of inter-
individual variability in both species
assemblages and abundance profiles. It is not
known whether the ecological dynamics, which
can be parameterized by intra- and inter-species
interactions and presented by ecological
networks, underlying human-associated
microbial ecosystems is host-independent (i.e.
“universal”) or host-specific. If the inter-individual
variability reflects host-specific dynamics due to
differences in host lifestyle, physiology, or
genetics, then generic microbiome
manipulations may have unintended
consequences, rendering them ineffectual or
even detrimental.
Alternatively, microbial ecosystems of different
subjects may follow a universal dynamics with
the inter-individual variability mainly stemming
from differences in the sets of colonizing
species. Here we developed a novel method to
distinguish between these scenarios. Applying
this method to cross-sectional data, we found
that both gut and mouth microbiomes display
pronounced universal dynamics, whereas
communities associated with certain skin sites
are likely shaped by differences in the host
environment. Interestingly, the universality of gut
microbial dynamics is lost in subjects with
recurrent Clostridium difficile infection but
recovered in the same set of subjects after fecal
microbiota transplantation. These results
fundamentally improve our understanding of
forces and processes shaping human microbial
ecosystems, paving the way to design general
microbiome-based therapies.