Professor Michael Wagner, full professor of Microbial Ecology at the University of Vienna and a Distinguished Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark, delivered the William Mong Distinguished Lecture titled “Seeing is Understanding: Next Generation Chemical Imaging for Super-Fast Functional Analyses of Microbiomes” on November 13, 2024. The lecture was facilitated by Professor Tong Zhang of the Department of Civil Engineering.
In the lecture, Professor Michael Wagner explored the challenges in environmental and medical microbiome research, particularly the need for single-cell functional analysis. He introduced the innovative imaging technique, stimulated Raman scattering-two-photon fluorescence in situ hybridization (SRS-FISH), which enables high-throughput assessments of microbial metabolism at speeds of 10 to 100 milliseconds per cell. He demonstrated the application of SRS-FISH in studying the effects of the drugs entacapone and loxapine succinate on the human gut microbiome. He highlighted how entacapone depletes ferric iron, leading to iron starvation in certain microbes, and discussed the implications of these interactions for understanding drug-induced microbiome disturbances.
Professor Michael Wagner (left) and Professor Tong Zhang (right).
Professor Michael Wagner delivered the lecture.