Page 8 - MDC Abstract Book & Guide

Abstract
I will discuss two broad open questions, and how microbiome data can help us answer them. First, does standing
biodiversity help or hinder the accumulation of further diversity in a community? Second, can bacterial
pangenomes – the set of genes encoded by all members of a species, including mobile genes not present in every
single individual – be considered an adaptive phenomenon, or can they be explained by neutral evolution or
selection at the level of selfish mobile element? To address the first question, we used the Earth Microbiome
Project, the largest standardized survey of global biodiversity to date, to provide support for “diversity begets
diversity" as a widespread driver of microbiome diversity. In diverse biomes such as soil, DBD reaches a plateau,
which is consistent with increasingly saturated niche space and a greater importance of abiotic factors relative to
biotic interactions in limiting diversity. Our results demonstrate a general scaling between levels of community
diversity, with broad implications for modelling and predicting microbial ecosystem function and stability. To
address the second question, we used public human microbiome sequence data to ask how mobile gene sequence
evolution is driven by the human host (e.g. age and social network), the mobile gene family, or the bacterial host
genome, and discuss the implications for our models of the population genetics of pangenomes.
Alexander Buko Human Metabolome Technologies
Alexander Búko has served as the Vice President of Human Metabolome Technologies-America (HMT-A) Biomarker discovery team since 2013, where he partners with biopharmaceutical companies to bring high resolution quantitative metabolomics profiling to pre-clinical and clinical studies. Prior to joining Human Metabolome Technologies, Dr Búko was Senior Director Translational Medicine at Biogen for 10 years and Principal Investigator at Abbott labs for 18 years. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia, with post-doctoral work for Bureau of Biologics and Biophysics at Food and Drug administration.
Presentation Title
Novel Technologies for Understanding Metabolomic Communications between Host and Microbiota
Abstract
The metabolomic array representative of the microbiome is composed of a large distribution of metabolites representing small and large compounds composing of both polar and non-polar species. No single analytical technique can measure all metabolites with a single measurement. Hence many techniques are needed to examine the changes in metabolite composition associated with disease and changes in bacterial distribution. At HMT, our unique capillary electrophoresis mass spectrometric (CE-MS) protocols have shown to be the best technique for resolving and quantitation of small polar metabolites, including small chain fatty acids in a diverse type of samples. CE-MS has shown the capability of measuring these critical metabolites and separate of many of their isobars (isobutyrate from butyrate, isovalerate from valerate and many others). This precision allows HTM to measure many specific metabolomic changes associated with disease, probiotics and changes in the bacterial distribution enabling improvement in therapeutic and health related treatments and product development.