About a new paper from my lab [1] on why gut bacteria swim, and whether their host cares. Many bacteria swim. It’s a great way to explore one’s surroundings, run away from toxins, or move toward regions with more food. Over the past several years, as we’ve used 3D microscopy to peer inside zebrafish to … Continue reading Putting the brakes on gut bacteria
Synopsis: In a recent paper from my lab [1], we report on watching gut bacteria get pummeled by low doses of antibiotics. The antibiotics induce changes in the spatial organization of the microbes, with major consequences for their ability to persist in the gut. Motivations At high enough doses, antibiotic drugs will kill bacteria, or at … Continue reading An intestinal amplifier for antibiotics
Are there general laws governing the gut microbiome? This is an important question if we’re to make sense of how the microbial ecosystem inside each of us influences health and disease, without being overwhelmed by its diversity and complexity. It’s also the question that, almost verbatim, starts off a recent paper from my lab, … Continue reading Kepler, Newton, and Gut Microbes
Synopsis: A blurb about a recent paper from my lab [1], on our discovery that the bacterium that causes cholera can manipulate the mechanical environment of an animal gut to expel resident bacteria. Introduction: cholera’s tools, and ours Cholera killed more people in the 19th century than any other epidemic disease, and it continues to … Continue reading New Tricks from an Old Bacterium
Review articles — papers that summarize a topic or a technique, assessing our present state of understanding and our hopes for the future — are useful and often enjoyable to read. In Physics, these are well respected but rather rare. In Biology, it sometimes seems like the ratio of primary articles to review articles isn’t … Continue reading The Once and Future Light Sheet
I’m a bit behind in writing summaries of recently published papers from my group. Here’s one that’s a few months old — I’m spurred to write now since I just learned two days ago that it got onto the cover of JACS, the flagship journal of the American Chemical Society: M. D. Hammers, M. J. … Continue reading Seeing the smell of rotten eggs
This post is really just an update to the last one, on our recent paper on watching the growth of gut bacterial communities, but I thought I’d post separately that I just learned that we made the cover of mBio. (Or more accurately, the illustration I submitted is the “featured image” for this issue — … Continue reading A bacterial clock
A friend of mine posts on his blog “lay summaries” of papers he writes, which I’ve always thought is a good use for a blog, though I’ve never gotten around to doing it. One of my graduate students will defend his Ph.D. in a few days, and so this seems like a good opportunity to … Continue reading Dancing Membranes
The Eighteenth Elephant 