Hundreds of microbial species are residing in the gastro-intestinal tract, however their localization and spatial organization are, as of yet, unknown. Deciphering the gut ecosystem architecture, the microbial spatial organization, will help us focus on their communication with the host and will reveal interaction and dependencies between microbial species. We are studying niche preferences of various species of microbes, as well as the spatial-temporal colonization, co-colonization and competition between gut microbes in vivo. To this end, we are combining several cutting-edge fluorescent labeling tools to facilitate these studies.
