ASM Microbe 17 Conference Report

I am at ASM in New Orleans. Today, I will make a presentation about our work on individual-based, genome-scale modeling of microbe ecology and evolution. I also attended several very interesting presentations. Obviously there is a lot of focus on the human microbiome and the effect on health and disease. On Friday I attended a very interesting presentation by Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute. His work showed that a lot of the differences in how people respond to nutrients is due to differences in the gut flora. So we are all different, but not because of our genes, but because of our microbiomes. This is why a general approach to nutrition (“cholesterol is bad”) doesnt work. He was able to make predictions about what constitutes a healthy diet for each individual. Fascinating! I always try to relate this surface water quality. Maybe the reason why our lakes often behave in unexpected ways is because of our general management approach (“phosphorus is bad”). Should we be thinking about “personalized diets” for each lake?

http://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/4358/presentation/1452
http://www.asm.org/index.php/asm-microbe-2017

https://omegavia.com

 www.systemsbioecology.org