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Comparative analysis of bacterial SynBio platforms Vibrio natriegens vs E. coli under fermentation conditions reveals differences in acid tolerance. Congrats to grad student Nick Haas on this milestone! journals.asm.org/doi/full/10....

New preprint by my grad student Nick Haas on nitrogenase regulation in the emerging synbio bacterium, Vibrio natriegens. w help from Dalia and Wang labs @iubiology.bsky.social. A new spin on γ-proteobacterial paradigms with paths for biofertilizer production. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Comparative analysis of monocultures vs cocultures for >600 generations reveals that cross-feeding can limit the emergence of loss-of-function mutations. Congrats to Dr. Ying-Chih (Ella) Chuang and coauthors (@megbehri.bsky.social +others)! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Last month, we had the pleasure of celebrating Lars Peter Nielsen's 40-year anniversary at Aarhus University 🎉 The day was celebrated with colleagues, collaborators, friends and family, with music, food and a number of speeches. Congratulations to Lars Peter on 40 outstanding years👏🥂

I am pleased to share my lab’s latest publication - Acinetobacter species lack canonical DNA repair pathway activation mechanisms, and we discovered a conserved transcriptional activator that fills this role: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Another paper on a topic we never worked on before: a new ribosomal hibernation! Under the leadership of the super-postdoc Diorge, Davis Lab (ribo-cryoEM master), and @vikramalva.bsky.social (protein-evo whisperer), we identified AHA (not the song, but archaeal hibernation AMPKγ factor). (1/2)

Please help spread the word about this 3-year postdoc position in my team. If your expertise & interest lie in studying how organisms from different domains of life (Bacteria and Archaea) communicate, come join us this summer in cozy Odense, Denmark. Job post: www.nature.com/naturecareer...

🚨 Less than 2 weeks left to register for Indiana’s primary election. Check your registration now—if you’re not registered, you can’t vote. Indiana’s primary turnout is often just 20–25%. Your vote matters. #HoosierSky #VoterTurnout #IndianaPrimary

See our new latest pre-print for a study led by grad student Ian Reynolds, with current and former undergrads Isabel Westin and Caleb Wood in the lab. A study that goes to show how so many cell surface processes are connected to each other in bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Bacteria commonly engage in cross-feeding, where nutrients are transferred between neighbors. Cross-feeding is thought to alleviate energy expenditures for genes whose role can be met by cross-fed nutrients, leading to eventual gene loss. However, few examples have been documented, especially in comparison to monocultures that lack a cross-feeding partner. We grew cocultures pairing phototrophic Rhodopseudomonas palustris with fermentative Escherichia coli alongside corresponding monocultures for 650–800 generations. While coculture conditions required obligate exchange of nitrogen and carbon, additional cross-feeding of adenine and iron likely occurred. Contrary to expectations, dependencies for iron and unknown compounds emerged in monocultures, but expected iron and adenine dependencies were not observed in cocultures. Low expression of iron scavenging and adenine synthesis genes in cocultures suggested that cross-feeding repressed expression, thereby lowering gene cost. Thus, although cross-feeding can sometimes make costly genes dispensable, there are also cases where cross-feeding lowers gene cost, thereby promoting gene retention.