Gut microbiomes through the lens of cultivation: we need to know better by Thomas CLAVEL

Abstract: In this presentation I will talk about how anaerobic cultivation enables functional studies of gut microbiomes, from basic principles to enhanced applications. This will include the description of novel taxa and genes, the implementation of novel cultivation workflows (boosted by bioinformatics), and how to make strain collections FAIR. If there is time, I will talk about our ongoing work on using isolates to define the causal role of gut bacterial functions in host health.
 

Biography: Thomas Clavel is a Professor in Microbiology at the University Hospital of RWTH Aachen in Germany. His research combines molecular, cultivation, and gnotobiology approaches to investigate human and animal gut microbiomes, with a focus on microbial diversity and the study of microbial functions underlying microbe-host interactions. A specific interest is to use innovative anaerobic cultivation approaches combined with bioinformatics to discover and describe novel microbes, and their genes, and to develop microbiome-based interventions based on cultured isolates. Tom has served in various editorial roles with microbiology journals and in grant review panels for many years. His international team is dedicated to the FAIR principles in science and strives to make research more sustainable.
After studying at the University of Toulouse and at Agro Campus in Rennes, France, Thomas obtained his master’s degree in September 2002, after a research project on the human gut microbiota and functional food in the laboratory of Joël Doré, INRAE, Jouy-en-Josas. He then moved to the lab of Michael Blaut (DIfE, Postdam, Germany) to work on his PhD thesis about the isolation and characterization of polyphenol-metabolizing bacteria from the human gut. From 2006 to 2017, he was postdoctoral fellow working on microbe-host interactions, then junior group leader and head of the microbiome sequencing facility at ZIEL Institute for Food and Health, all under the mentoring of Dirk Haller (TU Munich, Freising, Germany). In 2017 he moved to Aachen to start his own group of Functional Microbiome Research within the Institute of Medical Microbiology (Mathias Hornef) at the University Hospital of RWTH Aachen.
 

Thomas CLAVEL is Professor at the University Hospital of RWTH Aachen in Germany, more details -> Thomas CLAVEL