报告题目：Ecology of chronic lung infection microbiota

报  告  人：Professor  Christopher van der Gast

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, United Kingdom

报告时间：1月26日 上午9:30-11:00

报告地点：闵行校区生物药学楼2#116

联  系 人：张晓君 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

报告摘要：

The global burden of human diseases is shifting from communicable to non-communicable diseases, with chronic lung diseases now being one of the chief causes of morbidity and mortality - according to the World Health Organization. Counter to Koch’s postulates and the subsequent concept of ‘one microbe, one disease’ in infection pathogenesis, chronic lung infections have a polymicrobial aetiology. This is exemplified in the inherited multi-system disorder cystic fibrosis (CF), where a complex community of microbes colonizes the lungs, adapts to the lung environment, and develops an ecological community of organisms interacting with each other and the host. The best way to raise life expectancy in CF patients is to improve treatment of chronic polymicrobial lung infections. Implicit within the aim of improving and directing treatment is to better understand the nature of those chronic polymicrobial infections, their responses to standard treatments, and how they differ and change with disease progression. I will describe how we were the first to establish that chronic lung infection microbiota behave as ecological communities - through the application of theories, principles and models developed in traditional ecology coupled with ever improving developments high-throughput sequencing technologies. Moreover, I will describe how such powerful approaches has revolutionized our understanding of these chronic infections and are informing clinicians to provide improved treatment through continual reassessment of existing antimicrobial treatment regimens and antibiotic delivery strategies. Further, using CF as a model, I will outline how such approaches are immediately translational to other chronic lung infections, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

 

Christopher van der Gast教授简介：

Professor van der Gast was educated at the University of Oxford and is a Microbial Ecologist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UK) where he specialises in fundamental and applied microbiology.

His work is fundamentally focused on better understanding and predicting how microbial communities assemble and develop, and how microorganisms are distributed across different spatial and temporal scales; in essence unravelling the complexity of microbial communities in their natural environments.  He has achieved this by exploiting and adapting models, theories, and principles from traditional ecology, coupled with ever improving developments in high-throughput sequencing technologies (amplicon sequencing, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics). Using these approaches and with a strong drive to deliver research with obvious societal and economic benefits, his applied research is focused on areas of host health and disease, food security, and pollution; an example of which has been to use synthetic microbiology approaches to construct managed microbial communities, based on desirable ecological and functional traits of constituent bacterial species, to optimally treat industrial wastewaters.

An exciting frontier in science is the microbiome; the community of microorganisms that occupy distinct habitats within individual host species. Chris investigates diverse infectious diseases in humans, particularly chronic respiratory infections, using ecological approaches to understand within-host interactions that shape the composition of microbiomes and ultimately alter host health. He has extended this approach to wildlife microbiomes including gut microbiota-helminth interactions within the GI tracts of wild animal hosts, and gut microbiota interactions within bumblebees, an important plant pollinator species. In an agricultural ecosystem context, the microbiome inhabiting the rhizosphere has major influences on crop growth and yield.  Chris also currently investigates how rhizosphere microbial communities are organized in space and time, the factors which drive community assemblage and their functional significance at the root-soil interface for improved crop plant health and productivity.