The metaorganism imperative - we are not alone

Title: The metaorganism imperative - we are not alone

Speaker: A/Prof Christian Voolstra – King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST)

Recent years have brought a changing imperative in life sciences sparked by the revolution of genomic tools to study the molecular composition and functional organization of organisms. The development of next-generation sequencing changed our understanding of microbial diversity associated with organisms and environments. There are now a multitude of studies that support the notion that a host-specific microbiome associates with multicellular organisms and provides functions related to metabolism, immunity, and environmental adaptation, among others. Consequently, interactions and communication mechanisms of members in this metaorganism presumably play a major role in maintaining host health, microbiome stability, and resilience to environmental disturbance. It is currently debated whether metaorganisms constitute a hologenome as the unit of selection or whether metaorganisms are comprised of distinct entities that evolve independently. This plenary presentation will present and discuss recent efforts to investigate metaorganism function and evolution, and how the appreciation of host-microbe interactions provides new insight to host biology in light of the microbiome.

A/Prof Christian Voolstra – King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST)

Dr. Christian R Voolstra research area is environmental genomics with a focus on acclimation and adaptation of marine invertebrates. In particular, Dr. Voolstra studies coral metaorganism function combining ecological, environmental, microbial, and molecular approaches. Corals are metaorganisms composed of the coral host, intracellular photosynthetic dinoflagellate symbionts, and associated microbiota. Together these so-called coral holobionts form the keystone species of reef ecosystems. His most recent research has particularly advanced knowledge of how the bacterial microbiome contributes to coral animal host acclimation and adaptation. His work on metaorganism function and climate change is featured in high profile periodicals and he was recently featured a Science Hero at Nature/Frontiers. Dr. Voolstra has published close to 100 journal papers, various book chapters, and holds patents related to bioactive lead structures from marine organisms. Dr. Voolstra is a Scientific Coordinator of the TARA Pacific consortium, a steering committee member of the Global Invertebrate Genomics Alliance (GIGA), and a KAUST representative of the Reef Future Genomics (ReFuGe) 2020 consortium. Dr. Voolstra received his PhD at the Institute for Genetics in Cologne, Germany in 2006 and was a Postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Merced from 2007-2009. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Marine Science at KAUST’s Red Sea Research Center in 2009, and in 2015 was promoted to Associate Professor. In 2016, Dr. Voolstra became appointed Associate Director of the Red Sea Research Center at KAUST.