Building Better Ecosystems: The Rise of Synthetic Microbial Ecology

The MICA division is offering a new webinar series on the theme of synthetic microbial ecology for building better microbial ecosystems. These monthly webinars are intended for an international audience of researchers and students, and designed to facilitate interaction between experts in the field.

If you would like to receive information by email about this webinar series, please complete this form at: framaforms.org/Webinar-series

Synthetic microbial ecology

Studying the biological role of microbial communities is both complex and challenging, yet this knowledge offers significant potential for applications across various domains of life sciences from health to the environment. By deciphering the interactions among species within microbial communities and how these species interact with their biotope, we can devise strategies to engineer these communities to achieve specific applications.

Thus, the emerging field of synthetic microbial ecology makes use of knowledge-driven design and construction of microbial communities with the purpose of both understanding them as a functional unit and to tailor their properties. This approach has the potential to pave the way for new technologies for a wide range of applications, including bioremediation, biofuel production, food fermentation and medicine.

In synthetic microbial ecology, microbial communities are engineered in the laboratory, usually consisting of a limited number of strains or species selected for their desirable traits. Researchers control the community composition and environmental conditions to study species interactions and their impact on the community’s functionality.

This controlled setting allows for the isolation and identification of factors driving community assembly and functionality, crucial insights for developing new microbiome engineering methods.

A fastgrowing discipline

The field is currently experiencing rapid growth, driven by advancements in high-speed sequencing, meta-omics (including metagenomics and meta-transcriptomics), genome-scale modeling, genome-editing technologies and culturomic strategies enhancing the microbial resources available for such design.

Bringing together researchers from diverse disciplines such as microbial ecology, genomics, bioinformatics and modeling is key in developping these new tools and technologies that are helping to unlock the potential of synthetic microbial ecology. However, despite its advancements, the field is still in its infancy and somewhat disorganized. There is a lack of consensus on fundamental definitions, protocols, and methodologies.

To achieve this, the researchers already active in this new discipline need to organize themselves and capitalize on collective research efforts. For this purpose, we launch a series of webinars titled “Building Better Ecosystems: The Rise of Synthetic Microbial Ecology” to bring together the synthetic microbial ecology community, fostering collaboration and standardization across the field.

SAVE THE DATES!

Starting in autumn 2025, the webinars are scheduled on the last Tuesday of the month from 16:00 to 17:00:

30^th september 2025 - Young-Kyoung PARK

28^th october 2025 - Fabian MERMANS

25^th november 2025 - Kiran PATIL

16^th december 2025 - Eléonore POURCELOT

27^th january 2026 - Marie SIMONIN

24^th february 2026 - Rene NAIDOO-BLASSOPLES

31^st march 2026 - Rodrigo LEDESMA-AMARO

28^th april 2026 - Alvaro SANCHEZ

26^th may 2026 - Thomas CLAVEL

30^th june 2026 - Aymé SPOR

All webinars will be in English.

Contact

Scientific contacts : Eric Dugat-Bony, Thibault Nidelet, Kim Milfersted

In this folder

Tuesday June 30th 2026, 4:00 to 5:00 pm (CEST): Aymé SPOR will present his webinar with the title "Ecological Engineering of Multifunctional Microbial Consortia"

Tuesday May 26th 2026, 4:00 to 5:00 pm (CEST): Thomas CLAVEL will present his webinar with the title "Gut microbiomes through the lens of cultivation: we need to know better."

Tuesday April 28th 2026, 4:00 to 5:00 pm (CEST): Alvaro SANCHEZ will present his webinar with the title "Predictively linking the composition and function of microbial consortia: Taking inspiration from quantitative genetics."

Tuesday March 31st 2026, 4:00 to 5:00 pm (CEST): Rodrigo LEDESMA-AMARO will present his webinar with the title "Synthetic yeast communities for sustainable bioproduction"

Tuesday February 24th 2026, 4:00 to 5:00 pm (CET): Rene NAIDOO-BLASSOPLES will present her webinar with the title "Co-evolutionary insights from a yeast-microalgae mutualism: Identification of mutations that may improve cooperativity"

Tuesday January 27th 2026, 4:00 to 5:00 pm (CET): Marie SIMONIN will present her webinar with the title "Towards Plant Microbiome Engineering: Exploring Seed Microbial Diversity and its Impact on Plant Fitness using Synthetic Communities"

Tuesday December 16th 2025, 4:00 to 5:00 pm (CET): Eléonore POURCELOT will present her webinar with the title "Creating a Wine Model Ecosystem"

Tuesday November 25th 2025, 4:00 to 5:00 pm (CET): Kiran PATIL will present his webinar with the title "Cooperation vs competition in the face of perturbations"

Tuesday October 28th 2025, 4:00 to 5:00 pm (CEST): Fabian MERMANS will present his webinar with the title "Microbial flow cytometry – A powerful single-cell technology for characterization of microbial systems"

Tuesday September 30th 2025, 4:00 to 5:00 pm (CEST): Young-Kyoung PARK will present her webinar with the title "Synthetic community of the yeast for bioproduction"

Modification date: 02 June 2026 | Publication date: 10 September 2025 | By: MICA LM

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