All Things Great and Small

When you eat a chocolate bar, you never eat alone. Trillions of microbes in your gut join the feast. Some absorb leftover nutrients, while others break down complex food molecules, working together to share resources and keep the microbial community thriving. In this talk, we’ll explore how a simple chocolate bar fuels this hidden ecosystem and how scientists use DNA to study the microbes living inside us.

Bacteria might be tiny, but they’re constantly under attack from viruses. So how do they survive? It turns out they have surprisingly clever defence systems, but they’re not always switched on. In my talk, I’ll explore how bacteria decide when to fight back and how they control these defences, revealing a hidden unexpected side of microbial life.