III International Conference on Microbial
Diversity The Challenge of Complexity
The meeting aims to gather scientists in the fields of agricultural, environmental and food microbiology in order to promote discussion and exchange of information and experiences regarding the complexity intrinsic in microbial biodiversity. Biology has long been defined the science of complexity for the wealth of relationships among organisms and between the biotic and abiotic components of the environment. In this frame, the increasing awareness of the complexity involved in Microbial Diversity is fueled by unprecedented microbiological studies, innovative technologies in molecular biology and increasing data interpretation efficiency with bioinformatics tools. This perspective poses exciting challenges in terms of methods and substance, which constitute the two scientific standpoints of the MD2015 Symposium.
-The Methodological Challenge
Microbiologists have used the pure culture approach since C.E. Hansen first introduced the technique more than 130 years ago. Now meta-genomics, meta-metabolomics and meta-proteomics allow for direct studies of communities alpha and beta diversity. These high-throughput techniques produce such a wealth of data per time that current analytical pipelines are often unable to keep the pace, calling for new interpretation approaches.
-The Substance Challenge
Microbial diversity is present and has an effective action in almost all types of environment, including human body, plant and animals, food, natural and agricultural environments, poses the challenge of a detailed description of the microbiomes and of their evolution over the time. The awareness of rapid microbial circulation poses a further challenge to elucidate this aspect, by comparing microbial diversity among different environments.
We are looking forward to seeing you in Perugia, Italy on October 27th 2015
