The Agricultural Microbiology winter course involves two weeks of intensive immersive research in which undergraduate and graduate students from MIT and BGU work together to tackle one of the major challenges in modern biology, the design of synthetic microbial ecosystems.
Students will tackle this challenge in the context of modern animal agriculture, addressing gut-associated microbiomes that control the efficiency of energy conversion from plant fibers into animal biomass. The class will teach students state-of-the-art techniques and concepts required for isolating microbes from anaerobic environments, characterize their genetic make-up and metabolic functions, and devise rational strategies for creating multi-species consortia with prescribed metabolic inputs and outputs.
This course is the result of the joint efforts of Profs. Otto X. Cordero from MIT and Itzhak Mizrahi from BGU with the support of NSF-BSF, the MISTI-BGU program and the Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Department of Life Sciences at BGU.
