*CANCELLED* The Wonderful Microbial World of Cheese

Microbial communities play transformative roles in everything from Earth’s geochemical cycles to the human body. However, the complexity and difficulty in manipulating microbial communities makes understanding the mechanisms involved in community formation incredibly challenging. Rachel Dutton’s lab has focused on the use of microbial communities from cheese as models. These communities show reproducible and dynamic patterns of community formation which depend on widespread interactions between species. She and her team are now developing genetic, cell-biological and chemical approaches to studying species interactions in this model microbial community. Cheese will be served during the talk as well as after it.