Microbes are invisible, but their traces can last for millions of years. They can kill, protect, manipulate, disappear and sometimes even become part of the animals they once infected.
In this talk, I will take you through my work on host–microbe interactions across time, from ancient evolutionary partnerships to recent infectious diseases. We will begin with parasitoid wasps, where viruses have been domesticated and transformed into biological weapons used to interact with their hosts. We will then move into deep time, following microbial DNA preserved in mammoth bones and teeth to ask what bacteria and viruses can reveal about extinct animals and their lost ecosystems. Finally, we will turn to morbilliviruses, using recurrent measles outbreaks and the global eradication of rinderpest as a compelling lens through which to examine how pathogens emerge, evolve, confront human intervention, and, in rare cases, vanish forever.
Benjamin Guinet is an early-career researcher at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health, where he was recently awarded an Alfried Krupp Junior Fellowship to study measles evolution. In conjunction with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship beginning in September 2026, he will also work on the evolution of rinderpest mediated by vaccination at the University of Leuven (Belgium). Benjamin Guinet earned his Ph.D. from the University of Lyon (France), which was recognized by the French-Speaking Society of Virology in 2023. His work focused on viral domestication in parasitic wasp species. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm (Sweden), investigating ancient host-associated microbial interactions with mammoths. Benjamin Guinet is a Junior Fellow at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald for the 2025/26 academic year.
Moderation: Professor Dr. Sébastien Calvignac-Spencer