MetaHealth PhD researcher Coen Berns, from the University of Amsterdam, attended the International Study Group for Systems Biology conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from 7-11 September 2026.
Before the conference, he joined a two-day course on using computational models to study how cells (bacterial and human) process nutrients and respond to changing conditions. Practical exercises connected these approaches with experimental data.
At the conference, Coen presented his research on how bacteria in the infant gut likely must collaborate to produce butyrate, a substance involved in infant gut maturation and potentially even immunity. His work uses computational models of metabolism to investigate how bacterial communities and their nutrient environment, in particular the human breastmilk diet, influence this process and helps guide follow-up experiments in the laboratory.
This research connects MetaHealth’s computational modelling in Work Package 3 with laboratory research in Work Package 4. By studying how microbes interact and respond to nutrients, it contributes to the consortium’s broader goal of understanding the relationship between diet, the microbiome and health during the first 1,000 days of life. The course and conference offered the opportunity to develop modelling skills and exchange ideas with researchers working on related topics using similar methodology.
