March 25 – April 2, 2026

This workshop is part of a series of international collaborative events in Chile and seeks to foster fresh dialogue on metabolic research in prokaryotes and eukaryotes from systems biology and bioinformatics perspectives. It will bring together experts in genome-scale metabolic network reconstruction and mathematical analysis of such networks, alongside biologists from diverse fields with interests in single-species and community metabolism.

The Workshop comprises four types of activities:
1) A three-session course (March 25–March 27) on modern methods to construct genome-scale and metagenome-scale metabolic models, and on classical and non‑classical analysis approaches.
2) A series of research seminars (March 30–April 1) by specialists in bioinformatics, systems biology, metabolic engineering, and biology presenting diverse perspectives on the study of metabolism.
3) A poster session showcasing genomic data available in Chilean groups that could be analyzed during the workshop (March 30–April 1).
4) Many discussion sessions and round tables to state collaborations (April 2).

Venue:

Hotel Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, Chile (to be confirmed).

Organizing Committee

• Mauricio Latorre, Universidad de O’Higgins – Chile
• Alejandro Maass, Universidad de Chile – Chile

Program

To be Announced

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Date: Monday January 13, 2025

Continuing the series of international collaborative events held in Chile, this event aims to foster discussion on new ideas in the fields of Systems Biology and Bioinformatics. Through the development of novel questions and tools, we hope to deepen the understanding of the metabolism of microbial communities from diverse environments.

Particular emphasis will be given to methods and communities studied in the context of the project “INRIA Associated Team: SymBioDiversity: Symbolic and numerical mining and exploration of functional biodiversity” and “SYSTEMIX: Systems Biology Center for the study of the extremophile communities from mining tailings”.

Venue:

Classroom E301, Building E, Rancagua Campus, Universidad de O’Higgins, Av. Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins 611, Rancagua.

Organizing Committee

• Mauricio Latorre, Universidad de O’Higgins – Chile
• Alejandro Maass, Universidad de Chile – Chile

Program

9:00 – 9:30 Mauricio Latorre: “Structure, Interaction and Metabolism from Microbial Communities living in Heavy Metal Environments”

9:40 – 10:10 Anne Siegel: “What can we say from taxonomic affiliation : from metabolic functions to classification”

10:15 – 10:45 Coffee break

10:45-11:15 Sebastián Mendoza: “Enumerating minimal medium compositions to sustain metabolic activities from microbial communities growing at stead-state: a MILP perspective”

11:20-11:40 Clémence Frioux: “Exploring the metabolism of microbial communities with discrete models”

12:45 – 14:45 LUNCH

15:00 – 17:00 Working Groups

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Date: January 12 and 16, 2024

The aim of this workshop is to discuss on modern techniques to analyze the metabolic capacity of organisms and communities. Some topics to be included: genome scale metabolic reconstruction, flux analyses, metabolic response to environment, etc.

Venue:

Seminar Room
Department of Mathematical Engineering
University of Chile
North Building, 5th floor
Beauchef 851, Santiago

Organizing Committee

• Vicente Acuña, Universidad de Chile
• Alejandro Maass, Universidad de Chile
• Sebastián Mendoza, Universidad de Chile

Program

Friday, January  12, 2023

09:45 – 10:00 Reception

10:00 – 11:00 Anne Siegel: “Study and Comparisons of metabolic maps : adapt to the triptych of knowledge – data – scaling up”

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break

11:30 – 12:30 Daniel Garrido: “Modeling metabolic interactions in the gut microbiome: insights into HMO utilization and butyrate production”

12:30 – 14:30 LUNCH

14:30 – 15:30 Álvaro Altamirano: “Development of computational methods for predicting metabolic interactions in microbial consortia”

15:30 – 16:00 Coffee break

16:00 – 17:00 Clémence Frioux: “Exploration of microbial ecosystems: from compositional patterns to dynamic metabolic models” (slides)

Tuesday, January 16, 2023

09:15 – 09:30 Reception

09:30 – 10:15 Yann Le Cunff: “Prior knowledge and Machine Learning : Predicting enzyme functions and analyzing patients’ microbiota”

10:30 – 11:15 Natalia Jimenez: “What’s the objective? Applications of genome-scale models: from quantitative to qualitative and everything in between”

11:30 – 12:15 Marianne Buscaglia: “Exploring the diversity and adaptations of giant viruses in cold marine environments”

12:30 – 14:30 LUNCH

14:30 – 15:15 Vicente Acuña: “Unveiling abundance-dependent metabolic phenotypes of a community”

15:30 – 16:15 Chabname Ghassemi: “Towards culturing the unculturable: logic and linear programming for seed identification in metabolic networks”

16:30 – 17:15 Sebastián Mendoza: “CF-dFBA and End-Point-Optimization: Novel methods to simulate microbial communities’ dynamics and predict cross-feeding metabolites”

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