Many key molecules in our cells are specific enantiomers, and their mirror image forms are not found in living beings. For instance, the sugars in DNA are all left-handed, while amino acids are right-handed. For decades, scientists have wondered whether a completely "flipped" mirror organism would be viable and how it would function. With major... Continue Reading →
Our recently completed multi-year project suggests that there is no straight answer to this question! We sampled the leaves of different rice varieties across 3 years, finding that bacterial communities that live inside vs. on the surface of leaves differ in many ways, and over time. As expected from greater exposure to environmental influences (including... Continue Reading →
A new study led by Tapomoy Bhattacharjee's group shows that rods vs. cocci grow in distinct ways in porous 3D matrices, and these differences make rods more robust to increasing matrix viscosity. Bacteria in natural habitats likely live in such matrices; indeed, the bacteria used in this study were isolated from flour beetle guts in our... Continue Reading →
Bacterial genomes experience lots of mutations that result from a complex mix of DNA damage, errors made by DNA polymerase, and errors repaired or made by repair enzymes. Do these processes leave a tell-tale signature in the genome, and can we use it to infer which processes were most important? A new paper in Genome... Continue Reading →
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 →
Apart from humans, many organisms acquire beneficial bacterial partners from the food that they eat. But what about generalists, whose diet can vary every day? We asked whether the bacteria in the diet of the red flour beetle – a grain pest found across the world – impact the beetles’ fitness in different diets. For... Continue Reading →
Bacteria are so small and so ubiquitous that it seems like they should be found everywhere. But recent work shows that much like animals and plants, most bacteria have discrete distributions. We asked: does host association shape bacterial distribution in nature? In Pratibha's first paper from the lab, we describe how bacteria from the genus... Continue Reading →
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