Organized by Jeffrey Gordon and Todd Klaenhammer, this meeting was held at the Beckman Center in Irvine, CA on November 2-3, 2009.  This colloquium focused on characterization of the foundations of host-microbial symbioses, primarily in the human.   Given the remarkable growth of the field of metagenomics, and the astonishing proliferation of human microbiome initiatives in many nations, it was timely to convene a colloquium that examined the assembly, composition, functions and dynamic operations of body habitat-associated microbial communities.  The microbiota plays many important roles in maintaining health and in promoting various diseases and this colloquium discussed the experimental and computational approaches that are being, and need to be, deployed to comprehensively characterize our microbiome in health and disease, and interventional strategies that may be useful for its deliberate manipulation.

This meeting was co-sponsored by the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) and was followed by their Annual meeting on November 4-5. 

A Special Feature of PNAS was published in March 2011.  You can read the collection of colloquuim papers online here.

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Monday, November 2, 2009

Opening Addresses
Session Chair:  Jeffrey Gordon, Washington University School of Medicine

Nancy Moran, University of Arizona, Evolution of biological complexity and symbiosis

Session I:  Setting the Stage

Rob Knight, University of Colorado, Boulder, The 16S rRNA renaissance: computational and experimental perspectives

Jonathan A. Eisen, University of California, Davis, Looking at the tree of life

  

Elaine Holmes, Imperial College London, An integrated systems biology view of host microbial interactions

 

Elaine Vaughan, Unilever Research & Development, Approaches to study bioconversion of dietary polyphenols by gut  microbiota

                                        

Bart Keijser, TNO, Exploring the oral microbial diversity using the OC chip

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

 

Joel Dore, INRA, Metagenomic studies of the human gut

 

Forest Rohwer, San Diego State University, Viral diversity in human and non-human habitats

 

David Relman, Stanford University, Antibiotics: a tool to probe ecosystem robustness and diversity

                                  
                           

Session II:  Case studies

Michiel Kleerebezem, Wageningen University, Monitoring transcriptional responses in the human gut to the microbiota

 

Karen Guillemin, University of Oregon, Using gnotobiotic zebrafish to dissect the foundations of host-microbial interactions

Ruth Ley, Cornell University, A deeper look into maternal programming of the infant gut microbiota

 

Paul O'Toole, University College Cork, Gut microbiota of the elderly - The ELDERMET Consortium

                               Fredrik Backhed, University of Gothenburg, Tissue factor promotes microbiota-induced angiogenesis in the gut