Prof. Dr. Luis Teixeira (Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras)

Biological Colloquium at the Biology Center of the Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel
Monday, May 7^th 2018, 16:15

Seminar room 4th floor of the Center for Molecular Biosciences (ZMB)
Am Botanischen Garten 11

As guest of the CRC 1182

Prof. Dr. Luis Teixeira

Host-microorganism interactions lab, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência,Oeiras, Portugal

Talks about:

Bacterial symbionts of Drosophila melanogaster: from antiviral protection to farming

Virtually every multicellular organism establishes stable associations with microbes during its
lifetime. These symbiotic interactions range from parasitic to mutualistic, and in many cases
entail a history of co-evolution. A major challenge today is to understand how these
interactions are specified and regulated, and how the host and microbes influence each other
at multiple levels. We address these questionss using Drosophila melanogaster and its
symbionts as a model system. I will present the work of our lab on the bacterial endosymbiont
Wolbachia antiviral protection and titres regulation. I will also discuss the isolation and
characterization of bona fide gut bacterial symbionts from wild Drosophila populations, which
establishes a new model system to study gut microbiota.