European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (ECMTB 2026)

Metabolic Foundations of Microbial Community Interactions: From Theory to Practice

Not scheduled

20m

University of Graz

Minisymposium Systems Biology and Biochemical Networks Metabolic Foundations of Microbial Community Interactions: From Theory to Practice

Speakers

Dr Christian Diener (Medical University of Graz) Jürgen Zanghellini (Department of Analytical Chemistry, University of Vienna) Stefan Müller (University of Vienna, Faculty of Mathematics)

Description

Microbial communities play a central role in ecosystems, biotechnology, and human health. Understanding how these communities grow, interact, and respond to environmental change requires a strong theoretical foundation that can bridge the gap between genome-scale experimental data and community-level behavior. This minisymposium aims to bring together researchers working on the theory of microbial community growth, with an emphasis on metabolic modeling and ecological interaction types, highlighting how theoretical frameworks help interpret large-scale experimental findings and clarify emergent community dynamics.

By fostering dialogue between mathematicians, theoretical biologists, and experimentalists, the minisymposium will showcase recent advances in theory \cite{Mueller2026,Vayena2025}, illustrate how metabolic modeling can guide the interpretation of large-scale experimental data \cite{Carr2025,Best2025}, and identify open challenges at the interface of applied mathematics and microbiology of communities.

Bibliography

@article{Best2025,
title = {Metabolic modelling reveals the aging-associated decline of host–microbiome metabolic interactions in mice},
volume = {10},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41564-025-01959-z},
DOI = {10.1038/s41564-025-01959-z},
number = {4},
journal = {Nature Microbiology},
publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC},
author = {Best, Lena and Dost, Thomas and Esser, Daniela and Flor, Stefano and Gamarra, Andy Mercado and Haase, Madlen and Kadibalban, A. Samer and Marinos, Georgios and Walker, Alesia and Zimmermann, Johannes and Simon, Rowena and Schmidt, Silvio and Taubenheim, Jan and K\"{u}nzel, Sven and H\"{a}sler, Robert and Franzenburg, S\"{o}ren and Groth, Marco and Waschina, Silvio and Rosenstiel, Philip and Sommer, Felix and Witte, Otto W. and Schmitt-Kopplin, Philippe and Baines, John F. and Frahm, Christiane and Kaleta, Christoph},
year = {2025},
pages = {973–991}
}

@article{Carr2025,
title = {Personalized Clostridioides difficile colonization risk prediction and probiotic therapy assessment in the human gut},
volume = {16},
ISSN = {2405-4712},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2025.101367},
DOI = {10.1016/j.cels.2025.101367},
number = {8},
journal = {Cell Systems},
publisher = {Elsevier BV},
author = {Carr, Alex V. and Baliga, Nitin S. and Diener, Christian and Gibbons, Sean M.},
year = {2025},
pages = {101367}
}

@article{Mueller2026,
author = {M{\"u}ller, Stefan and Predl, Michael and Sz{\'e}liov{\'a}, Diana and Zanghellini, J{\"u}rgen},
title = {Elementary vectors reveal minimal interactions in microbial communities},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.1101/2025.07.30.667663},
publisher = {The Royal Society},
journal = {Journal of the Royal Society Interface, accepted},
URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2025/08/01/2025.07.30.667663}
}

@article{Vayena2025,
author = {Vayena, Evangelia and Ataman, Meri{\c c} and Hatzimanikatis, Vassily},
title = {in silico analysis and comparison of the metabolic capabilities of different organisms by reducing metabolic complexity},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1101/2025.08.08.669321},
publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory},
URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2025/08/12/2025.08.08.669321},
journal = {bioRxiv}
}