12:00 Veronica Llorens-Rico  

Using transcriptomics to dissect complex interactions in the human microbiome

Bacteria have the ability to respond to different perturbations and stresses in their natural environments by adapting their metabolism, producing virulence factors or secreting signalling molecules. These responses are mediated by changes in their transcriptional profiles, tightly regulated by various gene regulation mechanisms.

While these mechanisms have been deeply characterised in individual bacteria using transcriptomics, they are less studied in the context of complex microbial ecosystems, such as the human microbiome. However, deciphering the individual responses in bacteria from the human microbiome is crucial to disentangle the relationships with the other members of ecosystem, comprehend their role in health and disease, and design targeted modulation strategies. Recently, metatranscriptomics is starting to be used to uncover the functionality of human associated communities, yet its resolution is still not enough to fully characterise their regulation and the underlying interaction mechanisms at play.

In this seminar I will discuss specific examples from my previous work of how (meta-)transcriptomics can be used to understand how bacteria interact with their environment at different levels of complexity and detail: single bacterial species, minimal synthetic bacterial communities and complex host-associated communities in disease scenarios. I will also discuss future perspectives on how metatranscriptomics combined with novel high-throughput approaches can help dissect complex interactions in the human microbiome.

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