NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology

Cultivation-dependent techniques, computational analyses and genome-scale metabolic models show widespread amino acid auxotrophies, suggesting that soil microorganisms exist within integrated ecologic...

Abstract. Bacteriophages (phages) infect, lyse, and propagate within bacterial populations. However, physiological changes in bacterial cell state can prot

The relative importance of genetic drift versus selection to evolutionary change has long been debated. This debate has mainly focused over long-time-scales (e.g. hundreds of thousands of generations)...

All kingdoms of life have developed strategies to limit viral infection. In humans, interferons induce a suite of antiviral factors that collectively provide immunity. Some human immune genes are homo...

Some microbe species have evolved to stab, bomb, cannibalize, or poison each other. Can we harness their weapons for good?

Nitrogenase is the only enzyme capable of biological nitrogen fixation and a major target for sustainable agricultural engineering, yet its functional and structural complexity has made it difficult t...

Abstract. Microbial communities are often more species-rich than predicted from classical ecological models. The high levels of coexistence observed in nat

An overarching goal in microbiome research is to understand how the complex communities in our bodies contribute to health and disease, and ultimately, we aim to leverage and control these communities...

Please complete this form if you are a PI recruiting graduate students for a Fall 2027 start. If you are NOT recruiting, feel free to share the response sheet with prospective students looking for lab...

Migration of microbial communities is poorly understood. Here, the authors use a meso-tube assay to show that hundreds of microbial species co-migrate over metre scales via chemotaxis, which restructu...

The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. While we will consider all projects in ecolo...

In this Journal Club, Ashish Malik discusses a paper showing that soil microorganisms build stable soil organic matter.

To investigate the link between the gut microbiome and ovarian health, here the authors transplant gut microbiota from estropausal female mice to young adult female mice. Microbial transplantation imp...

Microbial community-scale metabolic modelling predicts person-specific short-chain fatty acid profiles and can be used to estimate the impact of dietary, prebiotic and probiotic interventions.

Spatial structure naturally emerges in microbial communities, shaping growth, interactions, and evolution, and revealing how microscale processes scale up