News and Musings

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(13)00633-7 "It is increasingly apparent that the dynamic microbial communities of long-lived hosts affect their phenotype, including resistance to disease. The host microbiota will change over time due to immigration of new species, interaction with the host immune system, and selection by bacteriophage viruses (phages), but the relative roles of each process are unclear. Previous … Continue reading My new paper on bacteria-phage coevolution within horse chestnut trees is now out and open access

http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347(13)00061-X "Coevolution, the process of reciprocal adaptation and counter-adaptation between ecologically interacting species, affects most organisms and is considered a key force structuring biological diversity. Our understanding of the pattern and process of coevolution, particularly of antagonistic species interactions, has been hugely advanced in recent years by an upsurge in experimental studies that directly observe … Continue reading New paper on the power of experimental coevolution is now online at TREE

And it's open access: http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/5/3/806 Why should we care about which bacteria are infected by what phages? Because the underlying specificity for infection is key to predicting if an how phages will effect the bacterial populations and communities in which they are found. We review what is known, what we need to learn, and why … Continue reading Our new paper on the importance of understanding phage specificity in natural populations is out!

Amy will be taking a novel approach to understanding if and how plants might benefit from phages in the environment. Although there is some evidence that viruses move around within plants, it has yet to be determined whether phages can play a role in hindering the establishment of infection by bacterial pathogens. Watch this space!