Biography
Biography: Willy Verstraete
Abstract
Microbial ecologists have struggled for a long time with the concept of how to represent in a single comprehensive term the fact that micro-organisms apparently can grow and work together . Most often one has referred to \\\'mixed cultures \\\' respectively \\\'microbial associations or communities\\\' . In that respect , the word \\\'biofilm\\\' was indicative of living and working together in a structured way . Yet the term \\\'microbiome\\\' as coined for the first time in 2005 , was even more striking (Backhed et al. 2005) . Indeed , it provides a connation which does not relate to carrier or surface materials and thus can be applicable for bio-systems operational in full scale technical installations such as drinking water supply installations, used water treatment systems , air scrubbers , composting plants , various types of anaerobic digester systems , bio-electrochemical configurations , soil biotreatment installations . In all these technical systems , normally one has organized communities of microbes at work and they are present in the form of 3-dimensional coagulates, flocs, sludges, granules , deposits .. Also in various food treatment facilities and zootechnical and medical devices open to microbibal invasion , microbiomes are the central active principle .They bring forward changes in chemical or physical compostion . In addition , they are often highly desired because they exclude unwanted species and thus have a barrier function . For these technical systems , the concept of \\\'microbiome \\\' as the bio-catalytic actuator has been a breakthrough because it reflects both the microbes and the collective genomes which are interacting . Clearly, the technologist dealing with the design, the optimization , the operation and the control of technical microbial systems has at last a term which reflects the very nature of his/her attention ie the assemblage of micro-organisms operating as a complex self organizing system having a level of species stability and driving particular conservation and conversion processes under open and variable conditions .
