Soren Brunak, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research at University of Copenhagen and Center for Biological Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark

Metatranscriptomics and transcriptional interdependencies
The gut microbiota is generally understood as an ecosystem with many symbiotic interactions. While these interactions have been studied as co-existence patterns, the microbial activities that are associated with co-existence remains poorly understood. The presentation will describe how metagenomics and metatranscriptomics data from human stool samples can be used to systematically map transcriptional interactions between gut microbes, and identify pairs of microorganisms whose co-existence correlates with a change in their gene expression. For example, one may study how transcriptional interactions may result in reduced gene expression during co-existence with companion species and whether interactions seem to be unidirectional or not. The talk will give gene level insight into community wide transcriptional interactions, and highlight that regulation of gene expression plays an important role in functional replacements, and stresses that microbes are best understood in their community context.

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