A professor’s gardening adventure leads to an impromptu contest - Binghamton News A professor’s gardening adventure leads to an impromptu contest in the Biology Department. -

Very important professional update:

www.binghamton.edu/news/story/5...

I am working with ASM to re-launch the Central NY ASM Branch! 🧫🦠

We have funds allocated for us and now just need 25 signatures from ASM members in the geographic region in support of this branch.

More info is in the form and also I’ve attached a FAQ sheet.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Modeling predicts that metabolic diversity increases the ecological impacts of weapon gene transfer. Modeling scenarios for each column are shown across the top row. Bottom row: Example dynamics of the strains (attacker, target, transconjugant) during a contest using parameters that correspond to the cross (X) shown in the parameter sweeps directly below.

#Bacteria use weapons to outcompete rivals, but what happens if they're transferred? @prokaryota.bsky.social @jdpal.bsky.social &co show that HGT of toxin #plasmids is rare but recipients can thrive under relaxed nutrient competition, reshaping bacterial warfare @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/43vC3X7

1 in 5 butterflies in the U.S. have disappeared in the last 20 years Researchers identified over 100 species that have dropped by more than 50 percent in the last two decades: "This is a wake-up call."

Scientists conducted the largest, most comprehensive analysis of butterfly total abundance (all individuals, across all species) in the U.S. and found huge declines. 🧪

People should be "very, very concerned," says study author Eliza Grames.

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

We are hiring a new position for Lecturer in Microbiology.

Check out the job posting here:

binghamton.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdeta...

Please pass on to anyone who you think might be interested!

I’m co-coordinating the Binghamton Biology Seminar series for the next year or so. If you’re in driving distance (sorry Hawaii) and a Prof, postdoc, or grad student interested in coming to give a seminar and have a fun day full of science conversations, send me a message! Tell your friends 😁

Diverse phage communities are maintained stably on a clonal bacterial host Bacteriophages are the most abundant and phylogenetically diverse biological entities on Earth, yet the ecological mechanisms that sustain this extraordinary diversity remain unclear. In this study, w...

Is it “winner-takes all” when the simplest living things compete? Check out my fresh publication on phage coexistence in Science and a thread below🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New preprint just dropped!! 🤩 Thread coming soon ...

Otherwise, we don’t say much about fitness benefits of transfer for the attacker/donor. It’s more a project about understanding how HGT can influence competitions between an attacker and a sensitive. We found metabolic diversity between competitors was key to high abundances of transconjugants

There were very small windows of parameter space where i did actually see a fitness benefit for the donor by giving away the toxin-bearing plasmid to a competitor. This I find very interesting, but outside the scope of this project… maybe something fun for the future.

Limiting the number of possible transconjugants. When we reduce nutrient competition by including a 2nd nutrient and some niche separation, the population of recipients is able to expand which are then rapidly converted to transconjugants.

Hi!
I did the modeling work for this project with Elisa. We take standard equations for modeling a community that starts with donors and recipients, which can be converted to transconjugants. In conditions with high nutrient competition, toxins dominate. Rapidly killing susceptible recipients and …