We wrapped up 2018 with the exciting announcement that our project was among those chosen for the new NSF Rules of Life program. Elijah Mehlferber, Jessica Metcalf, Steve Lindow and I will be testing whether and how knowledge of microbiome-mediated protection from one disease system can be used to generate predictions about protective microbial consortia in another. We are also working with Francis Weng, who published THIS fantastic paper and recently visited the lab on a fellowship from Taiwan, to develop and test the best computational methods for identifying protective consortia.
We are thrilled to welcome a new postdoctoral researcher, starting in March 2019, Kyle Meyer – joining us from the Bohannan lab at the University of Oregon. Kyle will be working with Britt, Jess Metcalf, and Steve Lindow to understand how microbiome transmission mode impacts upon community structure and function.
Britt recently contributed two opinion/review pieces, the first focused on new approaches in understanding bacteria-phage interactions, and the next on how host resistance against parasites might be gained and lost. She was also interviewed for a piece in Quanta magazine: “Should Evolution Treat Our Microbes as Part of Us?”
In collaboration with Justin Meyer and Katie Petrie at UCSD, and Jordan Moberg Parker at UCLA, we have been awarded a University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) award to explore the molecular mechanisms underpinning phage host range.
Finally, Britt was also recently chosen as a Winkler Faculty Fellow, and is incredibly appreciative of this support from the Winkler family, which will be used to further develop the Pear tree Fire Blight disease system we have been working on to track bacteria-phage dynamics in urban tree populations.
Koskella Lab at UC Berkeley 