University of Oregon microbiologist and Microbial Ecology and Theory of Animals (META) Center for Systems Biology Director Karen Guillemin recently discussed her field, last month's META Center Symposium on Host-Microbe Systems Biology and an unusual event sponsorship. 

The META Center Symposium on Host-Microbe Systems Biology drew more than 150 scientists from a variety of disciplines to the Hilton Eugene. The common thread was a desire to better understand the mutually beneficial coexistence of humans and their symbiotic bacteria, which are essential for human health.

The symposium shared a keynote address with the Big Opportunities with Big Data conference featuring Harvard researcher Curtis Huttenhower, a pioneer in studying microbial communities and handling the resulting large data sets. New innovations in DNA sequencing technology have opened up the microbial world to researchers, allowing them to enumerate the bacteria around and within us in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago.