Seth R. Bordenstein

Dr. Seth R. Bordenstein is a microbiome scientist and evolutionary geneticist whose research has influenced how biologists understand the relationship between animals and the microbial world. Bordenstein is an evolutionary geneticist and microbiologist in the Departments of Entomology and Biology at Pennsylvania State University. He has studied microorganisms that inhabit animals for more than 25 years, focusing on the essential role of the microbial realm in understanding life. Prior to joining Penn State, Bordenstein served as the Centennial Endowed Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University and was the founding director of the Vanderbilt Microbiome Innovation Center. He has also held positions as an adjunct assistant professor at Brown University and as a postdoctoral researcher and research scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Bordenstein's research includes several discoveries that have shaped the field of microbiome science. By examining interactions between animals and their microbiomes, his laboratory established the investigative framework for the trend that host phylogenetic relationships often mirror their microbiome relationships, a pattern termed phylosymbiosis. Additional contributions include identifying the genes and mechanisms that germline bacteria, such as Wolbachia, use to influence sexual reproduction—specifically the cifA and cifB genes from prophage WO that cause cytoplasmic incompatibility, as published in Nature and PNAS—and advancing the holobiont biology perspective for the study of life, as featured in Science. His analyses of the human microbiome reveal the effects of human genetics on the microbiome and disease, and his dietary intervention trial demonstrates that social groups, including ethnicity and race, are associated with gut and oral microbiome variation in the United States.

Bordenstein directs the One Health Microbiome Center, one of the largest microbiome centers within the Huck Institutes at Penn State University. With more than 550 members across 42 departments, the center received the WH Pierce Prize for Global Impact in Microbiology from Applied Microbiology International. His research specialties include the use of microbes to control mosquito-borne diseases, the diversity of microbiomes across human populations, and major trends in host-associated microbiomes across the animal kingdom. The One Health Microbiome Center has also received a National Institutes of Health grant to train doctoral students in biotechnological innovation, industry advancements, and interdisciplinary microbiome research.

In addition to his research, Bordenstein is active in science education. He is the former and founding director of the worldwide HHMI-initiated science education program Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project, which integrates biodiversity, biotechnology, and bioinformatics into classrooms. Bordenstein's honors include the Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Chancellor's Award for Research, the Chancellor Faculty Fellow Award from Vanderbilt University, the Genetics Society of America Award for Excellence in Education, the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Endowed Chair in Microbiome Sciences, and the High Impact Research Publication Award in One Health from Penn State. He is an elected fellow of both the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Bordenstein has also been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate and as one of the World's Top 2% of Scientists by Stanford/Elsevier. His career spans foundational discoveries in evolutionary biology, translational microbiome science, and science outreach.