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Seminar Details

Interactions between marine bacteria: Patterns, mechanisms and models

Date

15/12/2016

Lecturers

Dr. Daniel Sher - Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa

Abstract

Marine microorganisms perform one-half of the primary production on our planet, forming the base of a food chain that feeds plankton, fish and ultimately human societies. Laboratory experiments and analyses of natural communities have suggested that some marine microbes interact through symbiosis, allelopathy, competition, and parasitism, but many questions remain: How common are such interactions in the marine environment? What are the molecular mechanisms involved? And what is the impact of these interactions in nature, on a global scale? In the presentation I will first describe a high-throughput method to measure the effect of interactions in laboratory co-cultures of Prochlorococcus, the most abundant photosynthetic microbe in the oceans, and co-occurring heterotrophic bacteria. I will then discuss our progress towards deciphering the “chemical language” used by these organisms as they interact and towards incorporating such interactions into mathematical models.

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