O'TooleLab

OToole Lab News

March 22, 2018


Two former PhD students from the lab, Gary Heussler (top) and Kurt Dahlstrom, now post-docs with Rachel Dutton and Dianne Newman, respectively, both landed LSRP post-doctoral fellowships. Congrats guys! 















March 20, 2018

Check out a recent collaborative paper exploring the idea of "bacterial memory" during early biofilm formation. A model figure from the paper is shown on the left. This work headed by Calvin Lee, Jaime de Anda and Gerard Wong at UCLA was a really fun, international effort that included my lab and contributions from Ramin Golestanian (a theoretical physicist) and his team.  We even cited work by Alan Turing, which was also very cool.  We provide some key insight into how P. aeruginosa adapts to a surface, and provide a good explanation for why these (and likely other) bacteria undergo "reversible attachment" before they "irreversibly attach". This was a fun paper to work on, and a great example of each team working to their strengths!

March 13, 2018

Lab Tech Wanted: I'm looking for a lab tech to start in May (or so) 2018. I would like to find a recent college grad who wants to work in the lab for 2 years before going to graduate school.
The posting is here The job position # is 1010158.

March 07, 2018


Looking for a postdoc! Please spread the word. I am looking for a postdoc interested in working on microbe-host interactions in the gut in the context of cystic fibrosis. I have been working with a clinician (Juliette Madan) who is studying a cohort of young CF patients, and we’ve been looking at how the gut microbiota of young patients impacts airway disease.  Check out this paper and this paper to see what we’ve learned.  I now want to set up in vitro tissue culture models using primary cells and organoids to study how gut microbiota impact cells from healthy and CF patients.  This is a new project in the lab and requires someone willing to take on a tough project with some great upside (at least I think so).  Some experience in tissue culture is a plus.  And you’d get to work in the context of the Dartmouth CF Center – learn more here.  It’s a great, collaborative, interdisciplinary training environment.