News and blog posts
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- What do we look for in new lab members? Our lab’s approach to evaluating job applications and interviewsAs a young scientist I spent a lot of time applying to jobs and interviewing. For me the most frustrating part was the lack of transparency and feedback — written job criteria were usually vague, and afterward I received little to no feedback on why I didn’t get the job. Now that I am on… Read more: What do we look for in new lab members? Our lab’s approach to evaluating job applications and interviews
- Duhita receives an award for her abstract at the annual RUMP retreatDuhita received an award in the environmental microbiome category for her abstract on “The effect of cross-feeding interactions on mutant fitness in communities of E. coli” at this year’s annual retreat of the Rutgers University Microbiome Program. Congratulations, Duhita!
- New preprint from Aswin, Anastasia, and Michael on quantifying colimitation in microbesWith our collaborators Noelle Held and Donat Crippa and former lab members Aswin and Anastasia, Michael has posted a bioRxiv preprint titled “Nutrient colimitation is a quantitative, dynamic property of microbial populations.”
- Justus attends APS March MeetingJustus attended the 2024 American Physical Society March Meeting in Minneapolis, MN, USA. He gave a talk titled “Quantifying microbial fitness under conceptual uncertainty” in the session on Evolutionary Dynamics.
- New preprint from Michael on concepts, causes, and consequences of microbial nutrient colimitationWith our collaborator Noelle Held, Michael has posted an EcoEvoRxiv preprint titled “Are microbes colimited by multiple resources?”
- Shivali joins the labShivali Vanodia has joined the lab as an undergraduate research student. She will be studying the effects of different environments on the distributions of fitness effects in bacteria.
- Rachana joins the labRachana Rao Battaje has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. She will be studying the effect of antibiotics on bacterial growth under different environmental conditions.
- Duhita joins the labDuhita Sant has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. She will be studying the effect of cross-feeding on mutation effects, especially as mediated by spatial structure, in laboratory systems.
- Michael attends GRC on Applied and Environmental MicrobiologyMichael attended the 2023 Gordon Research Conference on Applied and Environmental Microbiology in South Hadley, MA, USA. He presented a poster on “Are microbes colimited by multiple nutrients?”
- Dhru joins the labDhru Desai has joined the lab as an undergraduate research student. He will be studying the effects of mutations under different nutrient (especially cross-feeding) environments using metabolic models.
- Michael gives seminars at TU Munich, University of Turku, and the University of HelsinkiMichael recently visited groups at the Technical University of Munich (Germany), the University of Turku (Finland), and the University of Helsinki (Finland) to present the lab’s work on the evolution of microbial population dynamics.
- Justus attends ASLO Aquatic Sciences MeetingJustus attended the 2023 ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. He gave a talk titled “Evolution across environmental resource concentrations: how microbes evolve and maintain low half-saturation for growth rate.”
- Justus successfully defends his Ph.D. thesisCongratulations to Justus, who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis at ETH Zurich on “Microbial growth as a function of the environment: Nutrient limitation, selection pressures, and community interaction”!
- Farewell to AnastasiaWe say goodbye to Anastasia after her time working as a research assistant with our lab as well as with our collaborator Noelle. Anastasia made excellent contributions to our work on the ecological stability of amino acid cross-feeding strains, the effect of mutations under different limitation conditions, and the unexpected growth of auxotrophs in non-supplemented… Read more: Farewell to Anastasia
- Michael attends APS March meetingMichael attended the 2023 American Physical Society March Meeting in Las Vegas, NV, USA. He gave a talk titled “Evolution of microbial growth dynamics” in the session on Evolutionary Dynamics.
- New preprint from Justus and Michael on microbial population dynamicsJustus and Michael have posted an EcoEvoRxiv preprint entitled “How do microbes grow in nature? The role of population dynamics in microbial ecology and evolution.”
- New preprint from Michael’s collaboration with colleagues at EawagWe just posted a bioRxiv preprint entitled “Physical contacts between sparse biofilms promote plasmid transfer and generate functional novelty,” from Michael’s collaboration with Josep Ramoneda, Yinyin Ma, Dave Johnson, and others at Eawag. In the preprint we explore the effect of physical collisions between expanding biofilms on horizontal gene transfer, namely carrying antibiotic resistance genes.
- Atharv and Kevin join the labAtharv Jayprakash and Kevin Thomas have joined the lab as undergraduate research students. They will both be exploring experiments using transposon-insertion mutant libraries to test the effect of cross-feeding on mutations.
- Michael moves to CABM at RutgersMichael has finally moved to Rutgers to start his new position as assistant professor in the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. We’re looking forward to building the lab in our new home and forging new research directions and collaborations!
- New publication on the evolution of microbial growth responseJustus and Michael (with our collaborator Noelle Held) have published our paper on the evolution of microbial growth response in PNAS.
- Michael speaks at the Cologne Evolution ColloquiumMichael visited the Institute for Biological Physics at the University of Cologne to present a talk entitled “Evolution of microbial growth dynamics” at the Cologne Evolution Colloquium.
- Michael attends workshop on microbial communitiesMichael attended a workshop on “Microbial communities: current approaches and open challenges” at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, UK. He gave a talk entitled “Evolution of nutrient colimitation in microbial communities” (see link for recording).
- Justus attends workshop on molecular mechanisms in evolutionJustus attended a workshop on “Molecular mechanisms in evolution and ecology” at EMBL Heidelberg, Germany. He presented a poster entitled “Microbial population dynamics decouple nutrient affinity from environmental concentration.”
- Anastasia joins the labAnastasia joined the group as a research assistant to work on transposon-insertion libraries and environmental effects on mutations.
- Tomas and Michael attend ISME18Tomas and Michael attended the 18th International Symposium on Microbial Ecology in Lausanne, Switzerland. Michael presented a poster entitled “Does nutrient affinity evolve in response to environmental concentration?”
- Jakob submits his master’s thesisJakob submitted his master’s thesis with the lab entitled “Modelling Mutational Effects in a Cross-Feeding Microbial Community.”
- Justus attends Marine Microbes GRCJustus attended the Marine Microbes GRC on “The Interconnected Microbial Ocean” in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. He presented a poster entitled “Microbial population dynamics decouple nutrient affinity from environmental concentration.”
- Michael attends meeting on communities and coevolutionMichael attended a meeting on “Communities and Coevolution” at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany. He gave a talk entitled “How does microbial nutrient affinity depend on the environment?”
- New preprint from Justus and MichaelJustus and Michael (with our collaborator Noelle Held) have posted a bioRxiv preprint entitled “Microbial population dynamics decouple nutrient affinity from environmental concentration.”
- Tomas joins the labTomas joined the group as a research assistant to work on transposon-insertion libraries and the effects of cross-feeding on mutations. He previously completed his master’s in Food Science and Technology at the University of Copenhagen and his bachelor’s in Dietetics and Nutrition at Florida International University.
- Justus attends the APS March MeetingJustus attended the APS March Meeting in Chicago, USA. He gave a talk entitled “Predicted adaptation of microbial population growth deceleration in feast-and-famine environments.”
- Justus attends conference on evolutionary systems biologyJustus attended the Virtual Conference on Evolutionary Systems Biology hosted by the Wellcome Genome Campus. He presented a poster entitled “Microbial population dynamics decouple nutrient affinity from environmental concentration.”
- Thoughts on the state of gut microbiome researchI recently attended a conference on the gut microbiome and health (mostly basic scientists, a few clinicians), and it left me thinking about the general state of the field right now in terms of what most people are doing, as well as what most people are not doing. The vast majority of studies discussed in… Read more: Thoughts on the state of gut microbiome research
- Science depends on yet another lone genius in InterstellarThe movie Interstellar was buzzy in the science media when it came out in 2014, both because it prominently featured exotic astrophysical phenomena (time dilation, black holes, worm holes, and so forth) and because it had the involvement of a famous physicist, Kip Thorne, to vouch for its credibility. After having meant to watch it… Read more: Science depends on yet another lone genius in Interstellar
- The possible and the actual in biologyI recently read the book The Possible and the Actual by François Jacob, who is famous for winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on transcription and gene regulation. The book is based on a series of lectures he gave at the University of Washington later in his career. I heard… Read more: The possible and the actual in biology
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