Research meeting: Principle of Microbial Ecosystems 2024 (14 Sep)

Principles of Microbial Ecosystems 2024
– how interspecies interactions shape community assembly –

How can we find principles of microbial ecosystems? Microbial ecologists have long been struggling to understand “function”, “stability”, and “plasticity” of microbial communities. However, we still have a long way to find the principles since a huge number of species coexist and interact with each other to form a complex network relationship. In order to understand the microbial ecosystems and to predict and regulate ecosystem dynamics, we should completely characterize the interactions as well as individual species. Pairwise interactions have been known to be commensal and mutualistic as positive ones and competitive and predatory as negative ones, but the interspecies interactions should be modulated by abiotic and biotic factors to shape community assembly. Multi-omics approaches, comprehensive metabolic flux analyses, artificial model microbial consortia, mathematical modelling, and their combinations would lead us to develop effective approaches to the goal. We hope this meeting is a good chance to exchange opinions about studies on “principles of microbial ecosystems”.

Date & Time: 14 September (Sat), 10:30-
Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan University, Minami-Osawa campus (Building 12, Room 201)
https://www.tmu.ac.jp/english/university/campusmap.html#

10:30 Opening remarks
10:35-11:30 Kazutaka Kawatsu (Tohoku University)
Emergent properties of complex ecological networks: considerations from a random matrix approach
11:30- [lunch break]
13:00-13:55 Stephen R. Lindemann (Purdue University)
Microbial division of labor and maintenance of diversity in polysaccharide degradation
14:00-14:55 Kenta Suzuki (RIKEN BRC)
Energy landscape analysis of microbial communities: from understanding to control
15:00-15:55 Wenying Shou (University College London)
Dealing with the complexity of microbial communities
16:00- Open discussion

Supporting bodies:
TMU strategic research fund for international collaboration 2023-2024 (Shin HARUTA)
Socio-Microbiology Research group (Japan Society of Microbial Ecology)

Contact:
HARUTA, Shin (Tokyo Metropolitan University) / 春田伸（東京都立大学）