Description:

The Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics presents:

Lingchong You, PhD
James L. Meriam Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering 
Director, Center for Quantitative Biodesign
Duke University

Presentation: 

Predicting and controlling microbial community dynamics

Abstract:

Microbial communities play central roles in infection, antibiotic response, and the spread of resistance, yet predicting how they change over time remains challenging due to intertwined ecological and evolutionary processes. In this talk, I will describe recent efforts from our lab to develop predictive frameworks for medically relevant microbial communities by integrating quantitative experiments, mechanistic modeling, and machine learning. We find that complex community behaviors often admit low-dimensional representations that capture their essential dynamics, enabling scalable prediction of community responses to antibiotics and the fate of mobile genetic elements such as resistance-encoding plasmids. I will discuss how horizontal gene transfer can simplify community behavior by stabilizing functional outcomes even when species composition is highly variable, and how this perspective suggests new strategies to intervene in community dynamics and slow the spread of antibiotic resistance.

Host: Dr. Arthur Prindle, PhD

Refreshments will be served.