Human Microbiome: Diversity, Selection and Adaptation (Q7)
February 18-21, 2025  | Fairmont Banff Springs, Banff, AB, Canada
Suzanne Devkota, Jeff F Miller and Roberto G. Kolter
Scholarship Deadline: Dec. 5, 2024 | Short Talk Abstract Deadline: Dec. 5, 2024 | Poster Abstract Deadline: Jan. 28, 2025 | Early Registration Deadline: Jan. 3, 2025
This meeting will feature a Career Roundtable where trainees and early-career investigators will have the opportunity to interact with field leaders from across academic and industry sectors for essential career development advice and networking opportunities.
* Session Chair † Invited but not yet accepted | Program current as of April 2, 2026 | For the most up-to-date details, visit https://www.keystonesymposia.org
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Registration (4:00–8:00 PM)
Welcome Mixer (6:00–8:00 PM)
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Welcome and Keynote Address (Joint) (8:00–9:00 AM)
* Suzanne Devkota, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Session Chair
* Bana Jabri, University of Chicago
Session Chair
Dan R. Littman, HHMI/New York University School of Medicine
Commensals and Pathobionts in the Gut
Microbes Across Space, Time, and Populations (9:30–11:30 AM)
* Jeff F Miller, University of California, Los Angeles
Session Chair
Roberto G. Kolter, Harvard Medical School
The History of Microbiology and Modern-Day Approaches
Mohamed S. Abou Donia, Princeton University
Microbiome-Derived Small Molecules in Health and Disease
Ashlee M Earl, Broad Institute
Genomic Insights into the Global Spread of Antibiotic Resistance
Moran Yassour, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Short Talk: Revealing Hidden Diversity in Bifidobacterium Longum: Insights from Early Life Cohorts
Orlando DeLeon, University of Chicago
Short Talk: Small and Large Bowel Microbiota Mismatches Following Fecal Microbiota Transplantation Lead to Long-Term, Unintended Effects On The Host
Symposia Spotlight: Late-breaking research presentations selected from abstract submissions (2:30–4:30 PM)
* Ben E Rubin, UC Berkeley
Session Chair
Julian Garneau, University of Lausanne
Phage-Derived Lysins for Precision Engineering of the Small Intestinal Microbiota
Simon Gray, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Human Microbiota-Associated Mice: Mouse-Adapted Human IBD Microbiota Transplant to Colitis-Susceptible Germ-Free Mice Induces More Consistent, Reproducible Colitis with High Microbial Transfer Efficiency Relative to Human Fecal Transplant
Jigyasa Arora, University of California, Berkeley
Phage-Derived Protein Delivery: A Tool for Microbiome Interactions
Dinh Quan Nhan, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Identification of a Type VII Toxin Secretion System in Crohn’s Disease patient-derived Clostridium innocuum
Jee-Yon Lee, University of California at Davis
Host-Derived Electron Acceptors Facilitate Uremic Toxin Production by E. coli, Exacerbating Chronic Kidney Disease
Alex Rodriguez-Palacios, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Genetically Uniform Parabacteroides from Fistulous Microlesions Highlights Lineage Adaptation in a Transmissible Bacterial-Succinate Cytotoxic Model of Crohn’s Disease Complications
Nora Pyenson, NYU
Diverse Phage Communities are Maintained Stably on A Clonal Bacterial Host
Maximilian Baumgartner, CeMM GmbH
Epimerization of Host-Derived Bile Acids By Ruminococcus Gnavus as Hallmark of Microbiota Dysbiosis
Coffee Available (4:30–5:00 PM)
Microbial Diversity and Fitness (5:00–7:00 PM)
* Roberto G. Kolter, Harvard Medical School
Session Chair
Jeff F Miller, University of California, Los Angeles
Diversity Generating Retroelements in the Gut Microbiome
Maria Mercedes Zambrano, Corporación CorpoGen
Community Adaptations Across Environments
Suzanne Devkota, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Host-Microbe Dynamics in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases
Christopher Mancuso, MIT
Short Talk: Intraspecies Warfare Restricts Strain Coexistence In Human Skin Microbiomes
Ming Liu, University of Oxford
Short Talk: How Does Diversity Affect Ecological Stability?
Poster Session 1 (7:30–10:00 PM)
Thursday, February 20, 2025
What is a Pathobiont? Microbial Adaptations and Host Damage (Joint) (8:00–11:00 AM)
Peter J Turnbaugh, University of California, San Francisco
Harnessing the Gut Microbiome to Counteract and Predict Cancer Chemotherapy Toxicity
Purna C Kashyap, Mayo Clinic
Time to Turn the Spotlight on the Small Intestinal Microbiome
* Russell E Vance, University of California, Berkeley
At First Sight: How Hosts and Microbes Sense Each Other
Iliyan D Iliev, Weill-Cornell Medical College
Fungal Commensalism and the Co-evolution of Type 2 Immunity
Darryl A Abbott, University of Pittsburgh
Short Talk: Maternal Immunoglobulin a Regulates the Development of the Neonatal Microbiota and Intestinal Microbiota-Specific CD4+ T Cell Responses
Darian T Carroll, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Short Talk: Regulation of Enterocyte Lipid Metabolism by the Microbiota-derived Metabolite, Phenyllactic Acid
Award Recipient Acknowledgement (9:20–9:25 AM)
Career Roundtable (Joint) (1:00–2:30 PM)
Ashlee M Earl, Broad Institute
Director, Bacterial Genomics
Trevor Lawley, Microbiotica/Wellcome Sanger Institute
Founder & CSO/Group Leader
Marin Vulic, Seres Therapeutics
Senior Principal Scientist
Alex Rodriguez-Palacios, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Assistant Professor
Jessica Langer, Helmsley Charitable Trust
Program Officer
Panel Discussion 1: Toward Molecular Mechanisms in Microbiome Research: Insights from Genetic Systems and Co-Evolved Pathways (Joint) (2:45–4:30 PM)
Ramnik Xavier, Massachusetts General Hospital
Panel Co-Leader
Ami S. Bhatt, Stanford University
Panel Co-Leader
Suzanne Devkota, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Andrew L Goodman, Yale School of Medicine
Michael A. Fischbach, Stanford University
George Kassiotis, The Francis Crick Institute
Coffee Available (4:30–5:00 PM)
Jessica Langer, Helmsley Trust Introduction (5:00–5:05 PM)
Host Colonization and Co-Evolution of Host-Microbial Interactions (Joint) (5:05–7:00 PM)
Maria Manuel Dias da Mota, GIMM- Gulbenkian Institute For Molecular Medicine
Inter-Kingdom Interactions Shaping Malaria Infections
Andrew L Goodman, Yale School of Medicine
Bacterial Diversity and Host Response to Medications
* Melanie Blokesch, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Environmental Lifestyle and Evolvability of Vibrio Cholerae
Clarissa Campbell, The Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (CeMM)
Short Talk: Bacterial Quorum Sensing Molecules Produced Via HdtS Homologs Affect Host T Cell Immunity In The Mammalian Gut
Gregory P Donaldson, UCLA
Short Talk: Gut Microbiota Induce an Immunoglobulin A-DMBT1 Feedback Loop to Tune Epithelial Cycling and Tumor Risk
Poster Session 2 (7:30–10:00 PM)
Friday, February 21, 2025
Genomic Insights from Big Data and Sequencing (8:00–11:00 AM)
Trevor Lawley, Microbiotica/Wellcome Sanger Institute
Integrating Mass Culturing and Metagenomic Analysis for Human Microbiome Translational Science
Ami S. Bhatt, Stanford University
Dissecting Microbe: Microbe and Microbe: Host Interactions using Genomics
* Katherine S. Pollard, University of California, San Francisco
Strain-Resolved Metagenome-Wide Association Studies
Jordan Jensen, Harvard University
Short Talk: Dramatically Improved Viral Profiling From Metagenomes And Metatranscriptomes Using Marker Sequence Identification
Menghan Liu, Columbia University
Short Talk: Tree-Of-Life Scale Genotype-Phenotype Association Reveals Conserved Gene Modules that Govern Microbial Colonization of the Mammalian Gut
William Jogia, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Short Talk: How to Quantify Microbiome Effects for Hundreds of Food Items: A Bayesian Model for High-Dimensional, Hierarchically Related Predictors
Melanie Schirmer, Technical University of Munich
Short Talk: Gene-Centric Metagenomic Analysis Reveals Microbiome Functional Insights into Diseases
Coffee Available (4:30–5:00 PM)
Novel Approaches and Applications (5:00–7:00 PM)
Katherine Duncan, University of Newcastle
Abyssal Antibiotics – Marine Biodiscovery from the Deep Ocean
Hannah Wastyk, Interface Biosciences
Bacterial Metabolites as Drugs
Cammie Lesser, Massachusetts General Hospital
Bacterial Delivery Systems from Agents of Pathogenesis to Vectors for Novel Therapeutics
* David Bikard, Pasteur Institute and Eligo Bioscience
Genetic Perturbation of Gut Bacteria With Engineered Phage Vectors and CRISPR
Meeting Wrap-Up: Outcomes and Future Directions (Organizers) (7:00–7:15 PM)
Entertainment (8:15–9:15 PM)
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Departure (12:00–11:59 PM)