New challenges in Microbial Eco-Evolutionary Medicine

Evolutionary Medicine is a young interdisciplinary field where the focus is on why we get sick, rather than how. Microbial evolutionary medicine particularly focuses on why particular microbes or microbial communities behave as pathogens, and others do not. Microbes are essential players in the game of human life and death, contributing to healthy immune system development, acquisition of nutrients, and protection against disease, but also causing infections ranging from mild to deadly. When considering ways to improve human health, taking evolutionary dynamics into account is crucial as microbes evolve fast, and our historical associations have shaped how we respond to challenges today.

Our workshop will address how microbial populations and communities affect human health, and how we can move from correlative patterns to mechanistic understanding. To do so we need a transdisciplinary approach, spanning the boundaries of clinical, computational, and experimental biological fields. We will address these challenges and bring together a group of diverse scientists in the respective fields, to further future approaches in Microbial Eco-Evolutionary Medicine.