August 29, 2012

Gary Heussler, a Ph.D. student in the lab, just returned from the Bacteria, Archaea and Phage meeting at Cold Spring Harbor, where he presented a poster on his work studying CRISPRs titled "Discrete phenotypic outputs of a CRISPR/Cas system".  Gary won an award for having one of the top 5 posters our of the 80+ posters presented at the meeting.  Congrats!

August 27, 2012

This summer I spent 7 weeks at the Marine Biological Lab (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA.  The MBL is the oldest marine lab in the country.  I worked in Mitch Sogin's research group, but also had the opportunity to work with Gary Borisy's group.  It was a fantastic summer.  Check out the view from my office window! As part of the summer experience, Deb Hogan (also a professor at the Geisel School of Medicine and my wife) and I were video recorded as part of a series of interviews with other scientists visiting the MBL for iBioMagazine.  I'm in the orange Cape Cod T-shirt and I don't say much until the end of the video (my 15 minutes of fame!). Check it out here.

August 22, 2012

A recent study headed by Juliette Madan, M.D., a neonatologist, and published in mBio analyzed the developing microbiota in CF babies - including both the lung and the gut.  The paper focuses on looking at the bacterial communities of CF infants from birth until ~2 years of age.  This work is the first close look at what happens to infants with CF in terms of the development of their microbial community, which is important because these individuals go on to develop chronic respiratory infections which are the proximal cause of death in these patients.  There were two particularly exciting findings.  First, changes in nutrition impacted the microbial communities in the LUNG, indicating a link between the gut and respiratory tract colonization.  Further supporting this idea, we observed for a number of microbes, that they appeared in the gut first, followed later by colonizing the lung.  I think Dr. Madan's work provides some new insight for future interventions to slow or prevent these respiratory infections.  For example, might oral probiotics impact lung colonization?  This is an interesting idea we think is worth following up.

This work was highlighted in mBioSphere online.

August 15, 2012

Chelsea Boyd, a PhD student in the lab, has been selected to attend the Seventh Annual NIH National Graduate Student Research Conference and present a poster.  This conference will give Chelsea a chance to present her work, and to meet potential post-doctoral mentors at the NIH.  Congratulations!

August 07, 2012

Our most recent publication comes from Sherry Kuchma, a senior scientist in the lab.  In this study, she demonstrated that components of the pili assembly machinery, called the "minor pilins", play a role in repressing swarming motility, suggesting a mechanism by which these two motility systems can "communicate".  Sherry also showed that the minor pilins likely exert their effects via increasing levels of c-di-GMP, a critical intracellular signalling molecule, specifically when the bacteria are grown on a swarm-agar surface.  Furthermore, it is one particular enzyme, called SadC, that is likely responsible for this increase in c-di-GMP.  Finally, growth on swarming agar also increases the level of the minor pilins.  Together, our data suggest that conditions which stimulate pili-mediated twitching motility, and production of the pili assembly machinery (including minor pilins) also repress swarming via boosting c-di-GMP levels.  Sherry received assistance from Ed Griffin, a former technician in the lab, on this study.