About the Bioengineering Lecture
The Bioengineering Lecture is the Department of Bioengineering’s flagship lecture, bringing our community together to hear from a leading international researcher working at the forefront of their field.
This year, we welcome Professor Julia Vorholt, Professor of Microbiology at ETH Zurich, whose laboratory studies plant microbiomes, one-carbon metabolism, and endosymbioses.
The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception, giving attendees the opportunity to meet Professor Vorholt and continue the conversation with colleagues from the university.
Engineering Endosymbioses Through Single-Cell Implantation
Abstract
Endosymbiosis, in which one organism lives inside another, has profoundly shaped the evolution of complex life forms. By intimately entangling two organisms, it enables hosts to acquire metabolic capabilities and expand into new niches. This interlinked lifestyle requires extensive synchronisation and co-adaptation of the partners with regard to immunity, metabolism, replication, and vertical transmission, yet how such partnerships begin and stabilise remains elusive.
We have developed a single-cell approach using fluidic force microscopy (FluidFM) to transplant mitochondria and, building on this technology, to induce and study endosymbioses by delivering bacteria into host cells. In a fungal host, implanted bacteria established a heritable endosymbiosis that, under sustained selection, became more stable over generations with fitness gains. These engineered endosymbioses offer a window into how cellular partnerships arise, and a route to designing new ones.
Biography
Julia Vorholt is Professor of Microbiology at the Department of Biology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
She studied biology at the Universities of Bonn and Marburg and carried out her doctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany. Following postdoctoral research at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, she led research groups at the MPI Marburg and subsequently at the CNRS in Toulouse, France. She joined ETH Zurich as Associate Professor in 2006 and has been Full Professor since 2012. Since 2020, she has been Co-Director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Microbiomes.
She is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Academia Europaea and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Her awards include the Otto Hahn Medal, the Feodor Lynen Medal and the Novonesis Biotechnology Prize, as well as three ERC Advanced Grants. Her laboratory studies and engineers plant microbiomes, one-carbon metabolism and endosymbioses, and develops fluidic force microscopy (FluidFM) for single-cell manipulation.