"Are we all ecosystems?" seminar run by StaPa

The Institut Pasteur's association for young researchers, StaPa, is running a seminar entitled "Are we all ecosystems? Host-symbiont interactions, development and immunity".

We are currently witnessing a conceptual, experimental and technological revolution in terms of our understanding of development. New data gathered over the past 15 years, often using cutting-edge techniques, have clearly demonstrated that the normal development of organisms depends to a large extent on interactions between host and symbionts. In organisms as wide-ranging as plants, sponges, cnidarians, arthropods and mammals, the development of the organism (sometimes even the very early stages of development) relies on the presence and action of bacterial and/or viral symbionts. Developmental symbiosis, which was long thought to be a rare phenomenon, now seems to be virtually ubiquitous in the living world (Gilbert and Epel 2015; Nyholm and McFall-Ngai 2014). Organisms are "holobionts" (in other words, units composed of a host and its symbionts), and they develop in a "holobiontic" way, in that symbionts are needed for their normal development (Bosch & Miller 2016).

This event will take place on April 13, at 2:00pm, in auditorium François Jacob. It will be led by Thomas Pradeu from the University of Bordeaux, who will attempt to shed new light on this scientific revolution and identify its major conceptual consequences for our understanding of biological individuality.

• Contact : pedro.hernandez-cerda@pasteur.fr

Photo: Bacteria R Us, Bryan Christie