News and Musings

http://shar.es/87vxl "Interest in using bacteriophages to control the growth and spread of bacterial pathogens is being revived in the wake of widespread antibiotic resistance. However, little is known about the ecological effects that high concentrations of phages in the environment might have on natural microbial communities. We review the current evidence suggesting phage-mediated environmental perturbation, … Continue reading Sean’s new paper on the risks associated with phage biopesticide use in the environment is out now and open access

Lin, D., & Koskella, B. (2014). Friend and foe: factors influencing the movement of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori along the parasitism‐mutualism continuum. Evolutionary Applications. HERE Abstract: Understanding the transition of bacterial species from commensal to pathogen, or vice versa, is a key application of evolutionary theory to preventative medicine. This requires working knowledge of the molecular interaction … Continue reading Paper exploring the transition of the human-associated bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, now online and open access at Evolutionary Applications

When Michelle Tseng (founding editor of Evolutionary Applications) asked me many years back how I felt about double blind peer review, I was fairly agnostic. Wouldn't most reviewers be able to guess anyway? Surely the system isn't biased enough to warrant such an obstacle? How will reviewers know what sort of overlap the study has … Continue reading As I see it: the value of double blind peer review

For this month's Evolutionary Application Research Highlight, I explored: Disease evolution and ecology across space "How infectious disease spreads both from individual to individual and across a landscape will depend upon many inter-related factors, including the genetic composition of host and pathogen populations, the pathogen transmission rate, host density, population connectivity, and the evolutionary response … Continue reading Disease evolution and ecology across space

Koskella, B. and Taylor, T. B. The potential role of bacteriophages in shaping plant-bacterial interactions, in Plant-Bacterial Interactions, Murillo, J., Jackson, R. W., Arnold, D., and Vinatzer, B. (eds). Horizon Scientific Press, Norwich UK.

Check the papers out here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/676888 and http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677032 (press release here: http://www.amnat.org/an/newpapers/VPKoskella.html) http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677032

Check out this great piece on phage therapy for plants and people by Michael Gross in Current Biology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214006654 Nice coverage of the work being done in the lab, especially by Sean Meaden.

For this month's Evolutionary Applications research highlights I look at the role of the microbiome in shaping evolution: "Over the past century, the study of genetics has revolutionized our understanding of life on earth. Our knowledge of trait heritability from parent to offspring has been central to predict the trajectory of evolution, studying disease, and … Continue reading The role of the microbiome in shaping evolution