More papers, awards, and grants

Congratulations to graduate student Norma Morella, who received the College of Natural Resources M.J. Vlamis Award for high level of academic distinction!

It’s no surprise given the great new results she has published:

(1) Morella, N. M., Gomez, A. L., Wang, G., Leung, M. S., & Koskella, B. (2018). The impact of bacteriophages on phyllosphere bacterial abundance and composition. Molecular ecology, 27(8), 2025-2038.

We show that naturally occurring phage communities in the tomato phyllosphere have important impacts on both the abundance (short term) and diversity (longer term) of colonizing bacteria during phyllosphere microbiome establishment. Taking an experimental approach, we were able to ‘deplete’ phages from field collected microbiomes using filtration (see below) and then compare the initial establishment of microbial communities on leaves in the presence versus absence of these lytic phages. Our results suggest the presence of phages decreases abundance of total bacteria 24 hours after colonization on new plants, but increases bacterial diversity when measured a week later.

(2) Morella, N. M., Yang, S. C., Hernandez, C. A., & Koskella, B. (2018). Rapid Quantification of Bacteriophages and Their Bacterial Hosts in Vitro and in Vivo using Droplet Digital PCR. Journal of virological methods.

We have spent the last few years developing a new method to quantify bacterial and phage abundance and dynamics both in vitro and in vivo. Using droplet digital PCR, we are working to get more accurate measures of bacteria/phage densities in order to more precisely address questions of bacterial and phage fitness, phage-phage competition, and the impact of phages on their bacterial host populations. We are very happy with the method, especially as it is saving us a great deal of time and plastic that we used to spend on CFU (colony forming units) and PFU (plaque forming units) dilution plating.

Finally, we are also celebrating the receipt of an NSF grant from DEB to study the importance of microbiome transmission in shaping the evolution and ecology of (plant) host-microbiomes interactions. Stay tuned for a postdoctoral opportunity announcement.

P.s. we also discovered that Carrot Dogs are amazing!!! https://www.brandnewvegan.com/recipes/smoky-vegan-carrot-dogs