O'TooleLab

OToole Lab News

August 31, 2017

I want to share a little bit of history that my former post-doc mentor Roberto Kolter shared with me.  On the left shows the award letter for the final year of this grant titled "Molecular Genetics of Biofilm Formation".  It is the final year of this grant because Roberto will be retiring this year and thus not renewing this grant.  Please note the start date - 1998, or 20 years ago.  I helped Roberto write this grant when I was a postdoc.  Since then, Roberto estimates that the grant supported ~20 postdocs that have gone on to be lab heads, and a quick search of PubMed shows that the grant supported over 100 papers, including the first paper I published on biofilm formation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.  I would argue the grant helped transform a field that focused on phenomena to one that defined molecular mechanism.  This was one heck of a productive grant!

August 29, 2017


I recently returned from teaching at the Microbial Diversity Course at the Marine Biological Lab.  This 6-1/2 week intensive course focuses on many aspects of microbial metabolism, physiology and biology.  As an indication of how much is going on, check out a picture of the lab towards the end of the course (left) and after the big cleanup (right).  It is a busy but engaging and fun experience.  After 4 years as an instructor in the course, I'll be taking over as co-Director with Rachel Whitaker.  I'm excited about the opportunity.  Check out the web page and keep an eye out for the application posting later in the fall!

August 27, 2017

In a recent collaborative paper in ACS Nano led by Jaime de Anda in Gerard Wong's group at UCLA, with assistance from Andrea Armani's group at USC, Ramin Golestanian's lab at Oxford and my group, we report a new "4D" computational approach for tracking bacteria near a surface.  This approach allows 5 ms resolution and requires only a standard inverted microscope.  A library of calculated images (FEM) is compared to bright field images (left) to determine the orientation of the cells at a particular time point.  These images can be strung together to recreate the motion of individual bacteria (right); the bacterium shown here is anchored by a point to the surface and spinning about that pole. Using fluorescent labeling of the cell body and the flagellum revealed novel diffusive and super-diffusive near-surface behaviors of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.  This new approach has the potential to help reveal the mechanisms whereby P. aeruginosa initiates surface contact, and can move across surfaces.

August 25, 2017

Check out the latest special issue of the Journal of Bacteriology focusing on two component regulatory systems.








August 18, 2017

Amy Baker defended her PhD this past spring, studying motility, stators and c-di-GMP in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.  She left the lab a few weeks ago to move to Boston and launch her career as science writer and editor.  We wish her all the best!