A huge congratulations to Dr. Sean Meaden, who graduate from the lab in 2016, on his recent Marie Curie Fellowship award. I asked Sean to send a quick blurb on what he will be doing, and he responded:
“I will be spending 2 years at the University of Otago working with Prof. Peter Fineran. The Fineran group are expert on studying both abortive infection and CRISPR immunity. I aim to combine experimental evolution with metagenomics to tease apart the relative contributions of ecological conditions on the maintenance or loss of bacterial immune systems. I will be investigating how ecological conditions shape bacterial immune systems. We know that phage defence systems such as CRISPR and abortive infection are highly variable between closely related bacterial species, which suggests rapid loss and acquisition. In turn, we predict that the maintenance or loss of these systems will be determined by ecological conditions. I will then return to Exeter for 1 year to continue this work with Dr. Edze Westra, an expert in CRISPR ecology and evoution.”
Congratulations again Sean, we can’t wait to hear about your new work and your life on the South Island!
Koskella Lab at UC Berkeley 