Biological and Biomedical Seminars
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Event Description
A critical open question in microbiome research is identifying key host-microbial interactions that influence host fitness. While the disruption of coevolved host-microbial interactions is known to affect host fitness in simpler systems (e.g., insects and their symbionts), understanding the extent and consequences of host-microbial coevolution in more complex systems (e.g., mammals and their gut microbiota) remains a major challenge. Her research has identified multiple species of gut microbes in adults and children that share a parallel evolutionary history with humans by analyzing paired human genotypes and bacterial strain genotypes. In another line of work, she applied a selection experiment demonstrating that selection and transmission of the microbiome and its metabolites can alter mouse locomotion behavior within four rounds of microbiome transfer, without any changes to the mouse genome. Finally, she will briefly outline her future plans to study the effects of disrupting evolutionarily stable host-microbial associations on the phenotypes of deer mice and human populations.
Presenter Details
Dra. Mónica Suárez-Reyes (She/Her/Ella)
Pennington Biomedical Research Center · Pediatric Obesity & Health Behavior Lab
Doctor of Public Health
2019 | Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium | PhD in Public Health Sciences
Suárez-Reyes is a postdoctoral fellow and joined the lab in June 2023. Her career has been focused on studying the relationship between physical activity, health, and lifestyles habit. She obtained a Bachelor’s in Physical Activity Sciences and then completed a Master's degree in Nutrition and Health Promotion in Chile. Later on, she followed a PhD training in Public Health at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium.