Every semester, EES organise a seminar series, which takes place on Mondays at 16:00 at Biozentrum, Room G00.001
Sommer Semester 2026
Ingo Ebersberger
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt - Germany
Potential and Pitfalls of Studying Biodiverse Genomes
Genome sequencing has become routine, and assemblies from species across the tree of life are accumulating in public databases at an accelerating pace. This rapidly expanding resource represents a treasure trove, enabling the compilation of large, customized genome collections tailored to address diverse functional and evolutionary questions at unprecedented resolution. To fully realize this potential, intuitive methods for managing, visualizing, and analyzing these data are essential.
In this talk, I will present novel approaches for dynamically integrating genomes relevant to specific studies or research communities into “digital showcases.” To illustrate their utility, I will explore the contribution of invertebrates to the carbon cycle, highlighting how customized genome collections can help address processes of global significance. I will also demonstrate how contamination in genome assemblies can confound analyses by assigning molecular functions to the wrong organism. This results in a spurious signal of horizontal gene transfer. When accurately identified, however, such contamination can be reinterpreted as genomic “bycatch,” arising from the sequencing of off-target taxa associated with the original organism. Using the genus Acinetobacter as an example, I will show how such biodiverse genomic datasets can be leveraged to monitor and characterize human bacterial pathogens in natural environments.
Host: Dirk Metzler
Previous and future talks in the EES seminar series