Tomas Alarcon Schumacher What Mechanisms Underlie the Interaction Between a Virus and its Host During an Infection?

Tomás Alarcón Schumacher is a doctoral student at the International Max Planck Research School of Marine Microbiology (IMPRS MarMic) in Bremen where he also completed his Masters of Science(2020). He has previously worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Pontifical University of Chilewhere he did his undergraduate degree. His research interests include viruses, molecular biology and metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analyses.

Area of Research

Microbiology

2017-2018

Research Assistant

Laboratory of ecology of extreme ecosystems, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

2017

Teaching Assistant

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Development and evaluation of projects in biotechnology (Bio364i)

2016-2017

Teaching Assistant

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Marine microbiology (Bio277M), Environmental microbiology and biotechnology (Bio331c)

2016

Teaching Assistant

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Biology of microorganisms (Bio151E)

since 2020

Ph.D.

Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (more details)

International Max Planck Research School of Marine Microbiology (IMPRS MarMic)

2018-2020

Masters of Science (M.Sc.)

International Max Planck Research School of Marine Microbiology (IMPRS MarMic)

2013-2016

Studies in Biology

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology

 Bremen

At the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (MPIMM), we are investigating microorganisms in the sea and other waters. What role do they play, what are their characteristics and how great is their biodiversity? What is the contribution of microorganisms to the global cycles of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and iron? What does this mean for our environment and our climate? These and many other questions will be answered by researchers from around the world, engineers, technicians and numerous others at the MPIMM. Their fields of expertise range from microbiology to microsensors, geochemistry to genome analysis and molecular ecology to modelling.
The MPIMM was founded in 1992 and is part of the Max Planck Society (MPG). Since 2002, the MPIMM has been running the International Max Planck Research School of Marine Microbiology (MarMic), a program for highly qualified master students and graduates of our institute and the Bremen Research Alliance partner Bremen University, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and Jacobs University.

Department

Max Planck Re­search Group Ar­chaeal Vir­o­logy

The Ar­chaeal Vir­o­logy group in­vest­ig­ates mem­brane ves­icle form­a­tion in Ar­chaea and the form­a­tion of plas­mid ves­icles and stud­ies the in­ter­ac­tions between mem­brane ves­icles and vir­uses.

Vir­uses that in­fect mem­bers of the third do­main of life, the ar­chaea, were shown to be very dis­tinct from vir­uses in­fect­ing bac­teria and eu­k­a­ryotes. Their dis­cov­ery has opened up a new fas­cin­at­ing world of vir­o­logy. Ar­chaea were ini­tially thought to in­habit only ex­treme en­vir­on­ments such as hot springs, hy­dro­thermal vents or very salty lakes (so-called hy­per­saline en­vir­on­ments) and the ma­jor­ity of the ar­chaeal vir­uses isol­ated to date come from such en­vir­on­ments. However, we know today that ar­chaea and their vir­uses also play a very sig­ni­fic­ant role in mod­er­ate en­vir­on­ments such as the ocean, but no ar­chaeal vir­uses have been isol­ated from mar­ine en­vir­on­ments so far.

One ma­jor re­search fo­cus of the new group will be the re­la­tion­ship of vir­uses with mem­brane ves­icles. Dur­ing her re­search of hy­per­saline Ant­arc­tic lakes, Erd­mann dis­covered a new virus-like ele­ment, the so-called plas­mid ves­icles (PVs). These al­low us to draw con­clu­sions about how vir­uses might have evolved. The evol­u­tion of virus particles ap­pears to be closely re­lated to mem­brane ves­icles, which are pro­duced by all liv­ing cells and serve a range of cru­cial func­tions in cel­lu­lar com­mu­nic­a­tion and in­ter­ac­tions with the en­vir­on­ment, in­clud­ing pro­tec­tion against viral in­fec­tion.

Map

Traditionally, viruses have been viewed as little more than killing machines. In this video, TOMÁS ALARCÓN SCHUMACHER shows how certain viral infections can have a positive effect on their hosts’ evolutionary trajectories. Focusing on chronic infections in archaeal bacteria, Schumacher employs techniques including quantitative PCR, RNA sequencing and proteomics. Among his more striking findings are that the virus can completely reshape the metabolism of the host and that the outcome of an infection is heavily dependent on interaction between the infecting virus and viral like sequences already present in the host. Greater understanding of the mechanisms at work here could help us to look for new solutions for viral diseases through viral-viral interaction based therapies.

LT Video Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10951

A Plasmid from an Antarctic Haloarchaeon Uses Specialized Membrane Vesicles to Disseminate and Infect Plasmid-Free Cells

  • Susanne Erdmann, Bernhard Tschitschko, Ling Zhong, Mark J. Raftery and Ricardo Cavicchioli
  • Nature Microbiology
  • Published in 2017
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Susanne Erdmann, Bernhard Tschitschko, Ling Zhong, Mark J. Raftery and Ricardo Cavicchioli. "A Plasmid from an Antarctic Haloarchaeon Uses Specialized Membrane Vesicles to Disseminate and Infect Plasmid-Free Cells." Nature Microbiology 2 (2017): 1446–1455. doi:10.1038/s41564-017-0009-2.