The Good, the Bad, and the Hungry

Why are sewage overflows bad for our rivers? What causes river fish-kill events? How on earth does rocket fuel end up in our rivers? In this talk I will aim to answer all of these questions and more as I describe the importance of nitrogen in our freshwater environments, how microorganisms may hold the key to improving the health of our rivers, and why memorising the nitrogen cycle is so difficult even for scientists!

Our gut is home to trillions of microorganisms that help us digest food and provide essential nutrients and vitamins. Gut microbes are susceptible to change with alterations in their makeup and activity occurring because of how we live and what we eat. Such changes have been associated with more than 90% of diseases affecting the gut, liver, joints, heart and brain. Understanding more about our gut microbes is key for not only physical health but also our mental health.
My talk will cover key questions:
-What are microbes?
-Where do they come from?
-How can we change them to keep us healthy?

The human gut microbiome is incredibly important for human health, having been linked to numerous diseases and human wellbeing. Decades of research have uncovered the enormous biological complexity of this ecosystem, with about 200 bacterial & fungal species living in each human gut, that harbour together 1000 times more genes and 10 times more cells than us - their human host! . At Pint of Science, I will show how the enterotype idea evolved over a decade and how steady innovations can nowadays help us to identify healthy gut microbiomes, and those on the verge of collapsing.