As part of Interface's 20th anniversary celebrations, a competition was launched inviting authors to submit a Perspective exploring where the field of interdisciplinary research will be in 20 years' time.
In this blog post, we speak with the authors of the winning article, 'Decoding microbial signatures: an interdisciplinary call in a warming world'.
Please introduce your author group and research background?
Cooperation between biologists, pharmacists, and a physicist was key to a productive discussion on the effects of global warming on microbial populations and its consequences for life as we know it.
Our backgrounds range from studying pathogenic microbial interactions and their impact on population dynamics, antimicrobial resistance and virulence, to determining the microbial composition of complex biomes with and without (or a few) anthropogenic interferences, such as sandbanks from northern to southern Brazil and the open sea in São Pedro and São Paulo Archipelago. Such studies are conducted by LabMIMB and LBCMFF, coordinated by Professor Marilene Vainstein and Professor Augusto Schrank respectively, and represent major lines of research in the laboratories, which are based in the Centro de Biotecnologia, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) at Porto Alegre (RS, Brazil).
All the evidence we gather in our daily research has fuelled our commitment to bringing microorganisms and their relevance to the forefront in our current climate, and to highlighting the need for an equipped, multidisciplinary science to address the challenges we will face in the years to come.
Why did you decide to enter the competition?
We decided to enter the competition after seeing a celebratory call of the journal’s 20th anniversary on social media: it felt less like an announcement and more like an invitation to reflect. Within our group, ideas have always circulated freely, especially around the importance of multidisciplinarity in science.
That perspective was deeply shaped by colleagues who pursued research abroad and encountered a reality where physicists, biologists, pharmacists, and chemists work side by side in the same laboratory. In our own postgraduate program (Postgraduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Biology, UFRGS), these boundaries are equally porous. Our research lives at the intersection of disciplines, particularly within biotechnology, a field that naturally weaves all of these strands together.
This call resonated with me, Maria Eduarda, and I felt compelled to invite my PhD colleagues: researchers for whom I have deep respect, not only for their work but also for their insights and ways of thinking. We wanted to write about something that truly mattered to us. In 2024, Porto Alegre (RS, Brazil) experienced the largest flood in its history: the city center was submerged for days, with public policies pushed to their limits. Once again, after the COVID-19 pandemic, which was also devastating for Brazil amid profound failures in public health management, we were confronted with the tangible consequences of climate change across multiple dimensions of life and science.
Inspired by these experiences, and by What If Fungi Win? by Arturo Casadevall (doi: 10.56021/9781421449005), we chose to define our contribution by exploring the borderlines of our own research. The theme immediately captured our attention because it closely aligned with our PhD projects, providing the initial spark to participate. From there, the idea naturally expanded through collaboration with colleagues who share a commitment to multidisciplinary thinking. We saw this competition as an opportunity to bring together urgent and interconnected questions: ones that not only demand discussion now, but that may profoundly shape the future of our planet over the next 20 years.
What’s the importance of interdisciplinary research in your work?
Day after day, interdisciplinarity is present in our lab routine, solving questions or creating new ones. As new scientific discoveries are made, the importance of interdisciplinary research becomes increasingly evident. Keeping our discussions beyond our formal education allows us to broaden our horizons and design projects that embrace topics that are intrinsically linked in ‘real life’.
What’s next for your research?
We believe science is, at its core, an act of sharing. Knowledge grows through exchange: the more we share, the more we learn, and the more meaning our work acquires beyond the laboratory. Building on this publication, we plan to use it as a bridge, sharing our research through our university’s communication channels and fostering conversations about the value of interdisciplinary studies within the academic community.
Our university is home to remarkable projects that explore diverse biomes, yet even within this richness, there is room to strengthen collaboration. Brazilian science holds an extraordinary potential: a wealth of ecosystems, questions, and perspectives that demand careful exploration. We believe that a nation must invest in science, and that public policies should be grounded in data, critical analysis, and well-founded conclusions. In this sense, we hope this article will open meaningful discussions not only in Brazil, but across the broader scientific landscape.
We see these approaches as essential for understanding the dynamic relationships shaping the present - and those that will define the next 20 years. In our own doctoral projects, we consistently seek dialogue across different scientific fields. Victoria Pommer focuses her research on the São Pedro and São Paulo Archipelago, with an emphasis on taxonomic identification of new species. Maria Eduarda Krummenauer works on pathogenic polymicrobial interactions, aiming to better understand the development of antimicrobial tolerance and how it may be influenced by climate change. Manoela Mace investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying the competitive fitness of Cryptococcus gattii, a pathogenic yeast that has expanded its ecological niche in a warmer world.
Moving forward, we aim to integrate cross-disciplinary approaches and methods, working collaboratively to align perspectives from different areas of knowledge. Only through this collective effort we believe it’s possible to address the complexity of the emerging challenges ahead - and to imagine more resilient futures for science and society alike.
Read the winning article, 'Decoding microbial signatures: an interdisciplinary call in a warming world'.
Visit our website to read more content from Interface, or to find out about the benefits of publishing with us.
Images:
Author group from the left: PhD Student Manoela Mace, MSc; Professor Mendeli Henning Vainstein; Professor Marilene Henning Vainstein; Professor Augusto Schrank; PhD Student Maria Eduarda Krummenauer, BSc; PhD Student Victoria Pommer, MSc.
Article figure: Environmental and anthropogenic drivers of microbial signature shifts. Illustration of natural and human-made disasters that alter microbial signatures, represented by changes in abundance, diversity, community structure and function.
