We're on fire! Check out the latest FOUR publications from ShadeLab
So proud of the recent publications by ShadeLab members and collaborators in the past few weeks - hold on to your hats, there is a list!
1. Stehling Guedes E, JP Reuda Furlan, R Lopes, JL Chodkowski, N Stopnisek, EA Savazzi, and A Shade. 2024 The relationship between water quality and the microbial virulome and resistome in urban streams in Brazil. Environmental Pollution. 348:12349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2024.123849
This work is a collaboration with ShadeLab sabbatical guest to MSU Prof. Eliana Guedes Stehling. She was visiting our lab at MSU right before the COVID19 pandemic started, and we generated metagenomes from urban stream environments to investigate the relationship between water quality and antimicrobial resistance. Because of the pandemic, she had to abruptly leave the US and return early to Brazil. Supported by Eliana's sabbatical fellowship and Ashley's NSF CAREER award, this work is a testament to perseverance during difficult times and also suggests more complicated drivers of AMR beyond perceived urban intensity of pollution.
2. Vandepol NS, A Shade. 2024. Is everything everywhere? A hands-on activity to engage undergraduates with key concepts in quantitative microbial biogeography. The Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education. Ahead of print: https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.00170-23
This work is the outcome of a team learning activity developed by previous MSU ShadeLab teaching fellow Natalie Vandepol and Ashley. We realized that students in the Microbial Ecology course were struggling with grasping fully concepts of dispersal and biogeography, and so we designed and tested these materials over three years in the classroom and one virtual (pandemic). We're happy to have it published as a peer-reviewed curriculum piece in JMBE, which is the American society for Microbiology journal of education. A fun fact is that Natalie is now an curriculum specialist with the MSU Eli Broad College of Business, so her graduate teaching experience served her well in her career goals! Congrats, Natalie!
3. Chodkowski JL and A Shade. 2024. Bioactive exometabolites drive maintenance competition in simple bacterial communities. mSystems. https://doi.org/10.1128/msystems.00064-24
We're super happy about having this piece out! It is the final chapter of ShadeLab PhD student John Chodkowski's dissertation, and it explores how microbes compete in non-growth states. We used a synthetic community design and John made a heavy lift to integrate many the different "omics" data: metabolomics and RNAseq plus phenotypic data (live/dead cell counts). He discovered active exometabolites that were made when certain syncom members were together, demonstrating an investment in interference competition despite the resource limitation. We think it's a nice piece that speaks to how microbes invest in competition even when conditions are not optimal for their growth, and we suggest reframing competition from considering only growth outcomes to also "maintenance" (non doubling but active) states.
4. Barnett SE and A Shade. 2024. Arrive and wait: inactive bacterial taxa contribute to perceived soil microbiome resilience after a multidecadal press disturbance. Ecology Letters. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.14393
Are you interested in how dormancy and transitions between active and inactive states contributes to community resilience? Who isn't, amiright? This piece is for YOU. It's gotten some great press as well, in English and French! Phy.org – 11 Mar https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/researchers-discover-new-insights-hiding-above-a-60-year-old-fire/ar-BB1jI6Km WLNS – CBS Lansing Michigan USA – 12 Mar https://playvideo.bulletinintelligence.com/a2fca6ca64874c489b3e393f4039269e?pubid=msu CNRS, 03 April https://www.inee.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/les-bacteries-inactives-naturellement-presentes-dans-les-sols-contribuent-la-resilience