TITLE:

Microbial and Phage Modeling

DATE:

Friday, January 29th, 2016

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 214

SPEAKER:

Dr. Rob Edwards

ABSTRACT:

We are surrounded by bacteria and their viruses, and those microbes have evolved alongside us. The human microbiome projects around the

world seek to explore the microbes in both healthy people and those with diseases. These projects have generated terabytes of data, and the challenge

now is to interpret and understand this data. We have developed new tools and approaches for modeling microbial genomes and metagenomes that allow us to

use linear programming to rapidly identify the flux through reactions in a model microbial cell. I will discuss the design and implementation of these

microbial models, and discuss the challenges in generating accurate models from DNA sequences. We have also developed new tools to identify organisms in

these datasets. Despite hundreds of years of culturing bacteria from people, many of the sequences in the human microbiome do not map to any known

organisms, and remain unidentifiable. We identified a complete new phage that has never been cultured before by comparing samples from different people

living in different places around the world. Our new studies are starting to explore the temporal and spatial distribution of this organism that is

present in about half the people in the world.

HOST:

Dr. Jose Castillo

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