Prof. Dr. Thomas Gilbert (Centre for GeoGenetics of the Natural History Museum of Denmark of the University Copenhagen)

Biological Colloquium at the Biology Center of the Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel
Monday, 29 May 2017, 4:15 pm

Lecture hall E 60 of the Biology Center
Am Botanischen Garten 5

As guest of the CRC 1182
Prof. Dr. Thomas Gilbert
Centre for GeoGenetics of the Natural History Museum of Denmark of the University Copenhagen

Talks about:
Towards a framework for the role of hologenomics in key evolutionary and ecological processes
The genomic revolution has led to enormous enthusiasm for utilising genomic-scale datasets to improve our understanding of both fundamental ecological and evolutionary processes, as well as conferring benefits in the applied context. Today such genomic datasets are being mined in an attempt to improve our understanding of fundamental ecological and evolutionary processes such as adaptation, competition, diversification, domestication, speciation, and even the basis of major evolutionary transitions. However, although these surveys are often being sold on the promise of benefits to survival, health and productivity rates in the biomedical and agri-science industries, it is rapidly becoming abundantly clear that the genomic-phenomic relationship is complex. Given that the genomes of both host organisms and relevant components of their associated microbial communities are subject to co-evolutionary forces, there is a growing realisation that they constitute a larger super-organism, the ‘holobiont’. This has powerful implications for both the study of fundamental processes within ecology and evolutionary biology (such as how species adapt, compete, and even speciate, become domesticated or go extinct) as well as applied questions within biomedicine and agrisciences (e.g. how can we best manipulate commercially relevant species to optimise their growth, yield). In the dawn of affordable ‘omics our group’s aim is to begin to be able to understand the mechanisms underlying the hologenome concept, and in doing so, explore its implications across basic and applied disciplines.