报告主题：The ecology and evolution of viruses

主 讲 人：Karthik Anantharaman教授（University of Wisconsin–Madison）

主 持 人：张 锐 教授

时 间：2025年12月9日（二）15：30

地 点：致知楼706

嘉宾简介：

Prof. Karthik Anantharaman is a microbiologist with broad research interests in microbial ecology, virology, biogeochemistry, and genomics. His research program spans environmental and human microbiomes, biogeochemistry, and bioinformatics. His wide-ranging interests stem from his education and experiences which have been highly interdisciplinary spanning sciences and engineering. His lab have a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusivity. Anantharaman’s interdisciplinary research program uses a combination of computational, laboratory and field-based experiments to understand the microbial and viral processes that underpin biogeochemical transformations in marine and freshwater environments and in human health. With increasing recognition that viruses and phage are integral components of all microbiomes, Anantharaman and his group are developing and applying state-of-the-art computational approaches and model systems to enable the study of viral ecology and interactions in nature. Anantharaman is the recipient of several awards, including the NSF CAREER and the NIH Outstanding Investigator (Early Stage Investigator-MIRA) Award.

报告摘要：

Viruses including phage play a crucial role in human health, global ecosystem processes, and biogeochemistry. While uncultivated viral genomes are revolutionizing our understanding of viral diversity, ecology, and evolution, environmental viruses remain significantly underexplored. As anthropogenic change begins to impact ecosystems globally, long-term ecological studies are emerging as powerful tools to investigate microbiome dynamics, evolution, and ecosystem change. However, such studies are rare in environmental microbiomes, and even less frequent on viral communities.

In this talk, I will describe recent long-term studies in laboratory associated with marine and soil ecosystems. Using hydrothermal vents and oxygen minimum zones as models, I will describe the roles and interactions of viruses in marine ecosystems. Hydrothermal vents are hotspots of activity in the deep ocean that host complex food webs of viruses, microorganisms, and eukaryotes. Viruses play a crucial role in these ecosystems as predators of primary-producing microbes, manipulating their population sizes and metabolisms. Next, I will describe the roles of viruses in globally significant peatland soils. Peatlands, the largest terrestrial carbon reservoirs, are vital for mitigating climate change, but are degrading at an alarming rate transforming from carbon sinks to carbon sources. As global restoration efforts intensify, understanding the ecological and functional roles of microorganisms and their viruses in these ecosystems is paramount. I will reveal how restoration fundamentally reshapes viral communities, their interactions with microbial hosts, and their influence on biogeochemical processes.