Jena/Norwich. Research thrives on exchange. The Leibniz Institute on Aging - Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) in Jena has always operated at a high level of knowledge transfer. A recent example: a guest stay by Dr. Ezgi Özkurt, a PostDoc scientist from the Hildebrand Group at the Quadram Institute and the Earlham Institute. Dr. Özkurt was thrilled to have secured an EMBO Exchange Grant to support her visit to FLI.
Dr. Özkurt has significant experience in microbiome research. She started her journey with microbiomes by exploring domestication-driven metaorganism in wheat. She continued her journey with human-gut microbiome and has conducted theoretical studies and practical experiments to improve the resolution of gut microbiome profiling in laboratory settings. She also leads the PEARL-AGE family cohort study (), which investigates the transmission of gut microbes across generations within families in the UK. Her current research is about identifying age-type bacterial guilds in the human gut. This approach aligns significantly with projects of the Dönertas Research Group at FLI, which focuses on AI in microbiome and aging research.
Shortly after her arrival at FLI Dr. Özkurt organized a workshop titled "Amplicon sequencing of microbiomes: Theory and Hands-on Analysis", sharing her experience and knowledge with the research community in Jena. The workshop attracted many participants and stimulated new discussions about microbiome data generation and analysis.
"I came to benefit from Dönertaş group's expertise in meta-analysis and machine learning and to discuss my results from an aging perspective. It's a great fortune that the teams at FLI are so open-minded and eager to discuss. This ultimately allows for well-founded and reliable contributions to aging research to be generated. I was very impressed by this, and it has strengthened my work - and increased my desire to continue working closely with FLI in the future”, said Dr. Özkurt.
Group leader Dr. Melike Dönertas confirms in turn: “We were delighted to host Dr. Özkurt at FLI for this six-week period, which was full of critical thinking, scientific discussions, and also fun. Her extensive experience in microbiome analysis aligned very well with our interests, and our complementary expertise in aging and machine learning helped create a synergistic environment that improved our collaboration. I am very enthusiastic about the prospect of continuing our collaborative efforts with Dr. Özkurt and the Hildebrand Group after her visit."
Concrete results are expected to be published in the coming months. New insights are anticipated into how the composition of microbes in the human gut changes over the course of life and whether these changes have an impact on the aging process.
