Seminars & Events

Biosciences Division Seminar
"From One End of the Gut to the Other: Microbial Community Composition and Dynamics"

DATE: April 23, 2008
TIME: 2:00 pm
SPEAKER: Dion Antonopoulos, The University of Michigan
LOCATION: Building 202 Conference Room B169, Argonne National Laboratory
HOST: Folker Meyer

Description:
In cattle a specialized organ has evolved (the rumen) housing a community of microorganisms that in concert degrade plant materials into utilizable substrates by the host animal. These organisms, beginning with fiber-degraders, convert the complex structure of fiber into increasingly simpler compounds. However, optimal activity of fiber-degrading microorganisms is dependent upon the remainder of the microbial community to "pull" on this metabolism by consuming the metabolic by-products. Many of the end-products (short chain fatty acids [SCFA]) of this concerted effort serve not only as an energy source to the host animal but their proportions are characteristic of the portion of the GI tract in which they are produced. Alteration of the microbial community, for example by the administration of antibiotics, can change the composition of these organisms and concomitantly the function of the community. Molecular-based microbial ecology approaches have been transformed by the high-throughput application of methods including T-RFLP, clone libraries, and, more recently, pyrosequencing. These tools yield data leading to insightful models of complex systems such as the microbial populations inhabiting the gastrointestinal tract of mammals - whether they be as small as the laboratory mouse or as large as cattle. Understanding changes in the structure of microbial communities is an important and crucial step towards framing the functional data gained from metagenomic sequence surveys.

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