1st Genes Webinar

Human Gut Microbiome

Trillions of microorganisms, mainly bacteria, reside in the human body, especially in the intestine, making up the so-called "human gut microbiome". Omics techniques such as metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metabolomics and, not least, culturomics, are making great strides in profiling this community and elucidating its role in human health and disease.

It is therefore a great pleasure and honor to welcome two world-leading experts to join us in today’s webinar, who have made outstanding contributions in the field of the human gut microbiome. They will show recent advances in their labs and highlight significant issues for future research.

Date: 22 November 2021

Time: 10:00am CET | 4:00am EST | 5:00pm CST Asia

Webinar ID: 889 3066 8764

Webinar Secretariat: genes.webinar@mdpi.com

On Monday, 22 November 2021, MDPI and the Journal Genes organized the first webinar on Genes, entitled "Human Gut Microbiome".

The introduction was held by the Chair of the webinar, Prof. Dr. Silvia Turroni, an Associate Professor in Chemistry and Biotechnology of Fermentation at the University of Bologna in Italy. Her research activity, documented by >130 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and >120 participations in national and international congresses (of which >50 as invited speaker), is mainly focused on the characterization of the compositional and functional structure of the human gut microbiome, and its impact on human health.

The first speaker to kick off this webinar was Dr. Alfonso Benitez Paez. He is a biologist and biochemist with a PhD in Molecular Biology, and an expert in microbial genomics with a special emphasis on bacterial functional genomics and human-associated microbiome research. He has contributed to random and placebo-controlled clinical trials for weight loss using dietary strategies. In addition, he has been deeply involved in the characterization of several candidate strains of the so-called next-generation probiotics. His presentation was entitled "Host-Diet-Microbiota Interactions Based on Integrative Multiomics Analyses".

Prof. Dr. Itai Sharon from the MIGAL Galilee Research Institute in Qiryat Shemona, Israel was the second speaker and his presentation was entitled "Defining the Prokaryotic Species Landscape in the Human Microbiome". Current research in his lab includes the characterization of microbial species diversity in the human microbiome, the development of computational methods for analyzing terabase-scale metagenomes from the soil, and the development and application of methods for the strain-level analysis of microbial communities.

The last presentation with the title "The Human Gut Microbiome up to Extreme Longevity" was held by the Chair of the webinar, Prof. Dr. Silvia Turroni.

Each presentation was followed by a short Q&A, moderated by the Chair. The webinar was offered via Zoom and required registration to attend. The full recording can be found here on Sciforum website. In order to stay updated on the next webinars on Genes, be sure to sign up for our newsletter by clicking on "Subscribe" at the top of the page.