Speaker
Description
The gut microbiota is now well established as a mediator of human health and disease with a central role in a myriad of host functions beyond digestion, including immune modulation, metabolic regulation and neurological signalling. Compositional changes in these bacterial communities have been causally linked to a multitude of diseases including obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes and neurological disorders. However, the dynamics behind these changes and the cause of inter-individual variation in community composition remains poorly understood. A deeper understanding of the response of these communities to perturbations - as potential mediators/triggers of compositional change - is therefore a critical component of establishing the gut microbiota as a promising preventive and therapeutic target in human health. This research aims to combine modelling and experimental approaches to explore the potential multistability of synthetic microbial communities, in particular whether perturbation by antibiotic and non-antibiotic drugs is sufficient to switch between stable states. If this is the case, there is potential to discover hysteric effects in these state switches and further disentangle the complexity of mechanisms in microbial communities.
