May Lecture - Emeritus Professor Gustaaf Hallegraeff

We warmly welcome Members and friends to our RST May Lecture - Sunday 5 May 2024. Join us at 3.30pm for a welcome drink in the foyer of the Geography and Environmental Studies Building, corner of Clark Road and Grosvenor Crescent, University of Tasmania, off Earl Street Sandy Bay. Lecture commences at 4pm. Please register for the event.

Lecture Synopsis

Microbes are organisms that are too small to be seen by humans without using a microscope. This talk takes us on a voyage of discovery from the first cyanobacteria

and algae that created an oxygen atmosphere, through protozoan malaria parasites that affected the human genome, to the fungi that delivered us antibiotics, beer

and wine, and bacterial (cholera, pest) and viral diseases (smallpox, measles, influenza, COVID) that shaped human ‘civilisation’. Most microbes are beneficial to

us and almost certainly will outlive us. We need to rethink how using advanced molecular tools we now better understand so that we can live in symbiosis with them rather than be at war.