Me, Myself & Microbes: The Microbial Roots of Complex Life
About this Event
Welcome to a Hood Lecture with Professor Matthias Horn, "Me, Myself & Microbes: The Microbial Roots of Complex Life"
Join us in MLT2 Lecture Theatre 303-102, on July 28, 2026 at 5:00pm for some light refreshments prior to the lecture at 5:30pm.
Abstract
Microbes rule our planet. As Earth’s oldest and most diverse organisms, they drove global biogeochemical cycles for billions of years before a profound evolutionary leap gave rise to eukaryotes - the complex cells that made plants, animals, and humans possible. Today, advances in genome sequencing and analysis are fundamentally rewriting our understanding of this tree of life and our own origins.
In this lecture, we will explore the deep microbial roots of our existence. We will examine what the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) might have looked like, how simple microbial cells interacted to create the first eukaryotes, and what we know about their closest living microbial relatives. Finally, we will trace how the rise of complex life forced certain microbes to specialize inside host cells, paving the evolutionary path for major modern human pathogens.
Join us for an evolutionary journey revealing that the history of microbes is, ultimately, the history of ourselves.
Biography
Matthias Horn is a Professor at the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental System Science (CeMESS) at the University of Vienna, Austria. He is a world-leading researcher on microbial symbioses, focusing on the hidden world of strictly intracellular bacteria.
His research demonstrated the global distribution and unexpected genomic diversity of chlamydiae as symbionts across diverse eukaryotic hosts, reshaping our understanding of chlamydial biology and evolution. Matthias has worked at the Technical University of Munich (Germany), the University of Washington (Seattle, USA), and the Australian Institute for Marine Sciences (Townsville, Australia), backed by prestigious ERC and FWF START grants.
He is a member of the European Academy of Microbiology (EAM) and was the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal µLife.
Agenda
🕑: 05:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Refreshments
🕑: 05:30 PM - 06:30 PM
Lecture
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
NZD 0.00
