27 Nov. 2015 - Ester M. Eckert

From heat maps to phylogenetic trees: one year of Lake Maggiore's microbiome

Presenta: Ester M. Eckert

CNR Istituto per lo Studio degli Ecosistemi, Verbania Pallanza

Prokaryotes are a lake's most divers and dynamics inhabitants. In 100ml of lake water we can find hundreds of species-like entities adding up to over 1000 of bacterial species found over the course of a year in pelagic waters. High throughput sequencing allows to follow the various populations of species in space and time, based solely on their DNA sequences In this presentation Dr Eckert will introduce a dataset of bacterial 16S rDNA sequences of one year of monthly, and one week of daily sampling in Lake Maggiore. The data is composed, on the one hand, by species abundance data and thus allows to investigate the growth and decline of various genotypes and their relation with environmental factors. The sequences, on the other hand, allow to investigate the phylogenetic and, to a certain extent evolutionary, relationship between the various bacterial groups. The presentation will focus on the variety of ecological and eco-evolutionary hypothesis that such a dataset allows to test and give insight into the composition and dynamics of lake bacterial communities.

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