Frontiers in Genomics: Mireia Valles-Colomer
The neuroactive potential of the human microbiome and its social transmission

Resumen de la plática
In our bodies we have at least as many bacterial cells as human ones. The human microbiome plays a key role in maintaining our health, and alterations in its composition are linked to multiple health conditions, including those linked to our mental health. In the first part of this talk, I am going to cover how we can survey the neuroactive potential of the human gut microbiome. But where do such microorganisms come from? In contrast to the well-studied epidemiology of human pathogens, little is known about how members of the human microbiome are transmitted between individuals and spread in populations. We recently performed a large-scale, systematic study by tracking the transmission of >800 microbial species among >9,000 samples, which provided a first overview of the transmission landscape of the human microbiome (Valles-Colomer, Nature 2023). We are currently expanding this work in multiple directions, including the identification of bacterial traits that promote their transmission, the assessment of the influence of other proximate individuals in shaping one’s microbiome, and studying how microbiome transmission is affected in diseases.

Mireia Valles-Colomer. Microbiome Research Group, Department of Medicine and Life Sciences UPF (MELIS-UPF), ES

https://www.upf.edu/web/microbiome

https://mireiavallescolomer.github.io

Frontiers in Genomics