Prof. Raghuveer Parthasarathy, University of Oregon

"Glimpses of Gut Microbes in their Physical World"

Coffee and cookies will be served at 3:45pm in RLM 4.102

Abstract: In any ecosystem, the physical structure of the landscape influences its inhabitants’ activities. In the vertebrate gut, legions of microbes cooperate and compete, influencing health and disease. However, we know little about the spatial structure, bacterial behaviors, and physical forces present, severely limiting our ability to understand and perhaps engineer the gut flora. To address this, we apply light sheet fluorescence microscopy to larval zebrafish with defined sets of bacterial species. Our experiments show how bacteria can manipulate intestinal mechanics to facilitate invasion, how antibiotics can alter aggregation and cause gut populations to collapse, and more. In all these cases, the physical properties of the microbiome emerge as major determinants of its dynamics.