Several years ago, Arun Prakash and Imroze Khan set up an ambitious experimental evolution study in the lab, infecting populations of flour beetles with the pathogen Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). They found that different selection regimes led to the evolution of mutually exclusive immune responses – beetles either evolved better basal resistance to Bt, or immune priming... Continue Reading →
Our paper describing the evolutionary effects of shifts in mutation bias is now published! We started out by asking if mutation spectrum could alter the fitness effects of new mutations in E. coli. To our surprise, we found a consistent effect across many environments, but could not attribute the difference to any particular properties of... Continue Reading →
Former postdoctoral fellow Rittik Deb has joined the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) Bhubaneswar as an Assistant Professor. Congratulations Rittik, and we look forward to all of the exciting discoveries that you and your group will make in the coming years!
The results of our field study of the impact of different Methylobacterium strains on their host rice landraces (traditionally cultivated rice varieties from Manipur) are out! We find that strains show host-specific effects (beneficial or deleterious). Though the mechanisms remain unclear still, it is clear that there is enormous potential to use beneficial host-bacterial interactions for... Continue Reading →
We are very happy that former lab member Laasya has joined Ashoka University as an Assistant Professor and will be building her group there to continue exploring themes of mistranslation and antimicrobial resistance. If you are interested in these areas of research, do consider joining her lab.
Bacteria have remarkably diverse base composition in their genomes, with many well studied cases of rapid GC reduction associated with obligate symbiosis and genome streamlining in poor environments. But we don't really understand how GC content generally changes in evolutionary time. To find out, Saurabh tested different evolutionary models of change in GC content in... Continue Reading →
This month the lab completes a decade of existence. I am proud of all the fun science we have done as a group over the years, and the myriad ways in which all of us have grown. A lot of earlier themes are wrapping up and there are new exciting directions to pursue. Onward, to... Continue Reading →
This post is delayed by about 10 months because we couldn't have a nice farewell for Rittik during the pandemic. But he was back in the lab for a bit and we were able to do things properly this time around. We are very happy to report that Rittik has joined as a member of... Continue Reading →
