'The sequencing singularity: microbiology goes digital!' - The Inaugural Lecture of Professor Nick Loman

Location
Dome Lecture Theatre - 2nd Floor - Aston Webb Building (R4)
Dates
Wednesday 9 October 2019 (16:30-18:30)
Contact

For more information, please contact Caroline Durbin by email or by phone on +44 (0)121 414 3702.

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About Professor Nick Loman

Nick works as Professor of Microbial Genomics and Bioinformatics in the Institute for Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham. His research explores the use of cutting-edge genomics and metagenomics approaches to the diagnosis, treatment and surveillance of infectious disease.

Nick has so far used high-throughput sequencing to investigate outbreaks of important Gram-negative multi-drug resistant pathogens, and recently helped establish real-time genomic surveillance of Ebola in Guinea. His current work focuses on the development of novel sequencing and bioinformatics methods to aid the interpretation of genome and metagenome scale data generated in clinical and public health microbiology.

The world is still not free of the burden of infectious diseases, and newly emerging species and strains are being recorded at a record rate due to factors including climate change, animal habitat loss, increasingly mobile human populations and increased use of antibiotics. Sequencing of pathogen genomes provides a molecular microscope to observe evolutionary changes that occur over time-scales of weeks and months. Rendering genomes into a digital format permits comparative analysis at massive scale over the Internet, and these datasets are becoming essential for the practice of modern epidemiology.

"In this talk I will describe the technical shifts that have breathed life into a new form of digital microbiology and show how these changes have dramatically influenced our understanding of pathogen biology, evolution and epidemiology. Taking examples from hospital outbreaks of antibiotic resistant bacterial pathogens, and emerging viral diseases including Ebola and Zika, I will demonstrate how we are nearing a 'sequencing singularity' where pathogen genomic sequencing will soon become a near-patient, first line test for infectious disease."