Subham's work on enforced specialization in siderophore production was published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. Congratulations Subham!

We are happy to welcome three new master students in our group.

Maria Muscalu is working with time-lapse fluorescence microscopy to assess the gene expression patterns involved in quorum sensing and will develop tools to facilitate single-cell image analysis.

Ove Mattmann works together with Dr. Subham Mridha and investigates the ability of prey species to develop resistance against predation by B. bacteriovorus.

Roger Kuratli will focus on the evolution of interaction networks among pathogens isolated from the lungs of children suffering from cystic fibrosis.

Over the last months, several new people joined our group:

Clémentine Laffont has joined our lab as a postdoctoral researcher. Her work will focus on the interactions between bacteria to experimentally test the “competition sensing” theory.

PhD Student Lukas Schwyter will work on the evolution of interaction networks among pathogens isolated from the lungs of children suffering from cystic fibrosis.

Flavie Roncoroni is doing her master thesis with us, and will examine how siderophore treatment affects selection for antibiotic resistance.

Xuedi Huang is a visiting student from China and is currently studying the evolution of pyoverdin receptors.

We are happy to welcome you all to the group!

Our work on the dual role of siderophores as public goods or public bads was published in Ecology Letters.
Congratulations to all involved!

We've recently uploaded a fresh batch of preprints! 

1. in a work led by Priya Jayakumar, we show that individual bacterial cells take different amounts of time to "turn on" their quorum-sensing systems, and a group-level response is obtained progressively, rather than immediately. This work is fruit of a collaboration with Stephen Thomas and Sam Brown from Georgia Tech.

2. In a work led by Alex Figueiredo and Özhan Özkaya, we show that siderophore cross-use (or lack thereof) may be a very important predictor of bacterial invasion outcomes. This work is also Jos's debut as a last author in an experimental paper. 

3. Subham Mridha's work with bacterial cells "specializing" in different siderophores suggests that this specialization leads to cross-cheating, and not divison of labour!

4. Finally, in Selina Niggli's work on interspecific interactions between P. aeruginosa and S. aureus, we surprisingly found that the latter can often outcompete the former on solid surfaces!

We've recently made available three preprints! 

First, Elena Butaité's last PhD piece, where we show that relatedness, but not geographic distance mostly explain exploitation of pyoverdine between Pseudomonas strains. 

Second, Alex Figueiredo's experimental evolution paper shows that reducing the cost-benefit ratio, or increasing the relatedness between interacting individuals can select for higher cooperative investment

Finally, Subham Mridha's article shows how siderophore gene expression among bacterial groups starts off uncoordinated but progressively homogenizes over time.  

We've recently published two papers: 

First, Selina Niggli's first PhD project on interspecific interactions got published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 

Chiara Rezzoagli's last PhD paper (with MSc student Martina Archetti) on antibiotics and antivirulence compounds was published in PLOS Biology.

Congratulations to all involved!

We have just released a new preprint!  In this work, led by PhD student Selina Niggli, we looked at competitive interactions between two co-occurring human pathogens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphyloccocus aureus, and the (a)biotic factors that shape these interactions.