Microorganisms and the Microbiome

This Wednesday afternoon session will present new research into the microbiome. It will be chaired by Trent Northern of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and will be held in Ballroom 20A from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Pieter Dorrestein of the University of California San Diego will open the session with a presentation titled “Global Analysis of the Chemistry Associated with the Microbiome.” His talk will discuss a global inventory of MS data to gain insight into the chemical drivers of the microbiome.

The session’s second presentation will be given by Sungwhan Oh of Harvard Medical School and is titled “Lipidomic Dissection of Immunomodulatory Mediator Biosynthesis by Gut Microbiota–Diet Interaction.” Oh’s presentation will describe a molecular-level investigation of the host-microbiota-diet loop, and commensal lipid mediators, of which production is dictated by diet and feedback host immunity.

Next, Maja Semanjski of the University of Tuebingen (Germany) will present a talk titled “Application of Dynamic SILAC to Determine Protein Turnover During Toxin-Induced Persistence and Resuscitation in E. Coli.” Semanjski will discuss what is said to be the first global measurement of protein turnover in the context of bacterial persistence and resuscitation.

Nicola Zamboni of ETH Zürich (Switzerland) will give the next presentation, titled “Elucidation of Metabolic Networks by Large Scale, Non-Targeted Metabolomics.” This presentation will cover a metabolomic approach for direct analysis of enzymatic activity with the ability to effectively screen thousands of individual samples.

Bahar Behsaz of the University of California San Diego will then present a talk titled “De Novo Sequencing of Tandem Mass Spectra Reveals a Vast Dark Matter of Cyclopeptidomics.” In this presentation, Behsaz will discuss how a de novo cyclopeptide sequencing approach was used to reveal cyclopeptides in the human fecal metabolome, including some antimicrobial orbitides from consumed plants surviving digestion.

The session’s final presentation, titled “Characterization of the Central Pacific Oxygen Minimum Zone: The Results of the ProteOMZ Expedition,” will be given by Jaclyn Saunders of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Her presentation will describe global metaproteomic analyses conducted on large-volume samples collected using in situ underwater pump systems.