We studied the effect of ectomycorrhizas and fertilization on soil microbial communities associated with roots of 10-year-old loblolly pine. Ectomycorrhizas were identified using a combination of community terminal restriction fragment profiling and matching of individual terminal restriction fragments to those produced from ectomycorrhizal clones and sequences recovered from roots and sporocar...

Considering the importance of its potential implications for human health, agricultural productivity, and ecosystem stability, surprisingly little is known regarding the composition or dynamics of the atmosphere's microbial inhabitants. Using a custom high-density DNA microarray, we detected and monitored bacterial populations in two U.S. cities over 17 weeks. These urban aerosols contained at ...

This investigation describes the development of a generally applicable, bioinformatics-driven, single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping assay for the common bacterial gastrointestinal pathogen Campylobacter jejuni. SNPs were identified in silico using the program 'Minimum SNPs', which selects for polymorphisms providing the greatest resolution of bacterial populations based on Simpson's ...

Natural transformation is a process whereby bacteria actively take up DNA from the surrounding environment and incorporate it into their genome. Natural transformation is widespread in bacteria, but its evolutionary significance is still debated. Here, we hypothesize that transformation may confer a fitness advantage in changing environments through a process we term 'genetic time travel': by t...

Bacterial communities reside in basal ice, sediment, and meltwater in the supra-, sub-, and proglacial environments of John Evans Glacier, Nunavut, Canada. We examined whether the subglacial bacterial community shares common members with the pro- and supraglacial communities, and by inference, whether it could be derived from communities in either of these environments (e.g., by ice overriding ...

This project will analyze and test the accuracy of dynamic typing pattern authentication methods. The program will generate a dynamic set of text that the user will be prompted to type, and then it will feed the user’s typing characteristics through neural network structures. Experimentation will be done to determine the most accurate neural network structures and data collection conditions. Th...

Brucellosis, a worldwide common bacterial zoonotic disease, has become quite rare in Northern and Western Europe. However, since 2014 a significant increase of imported infections caused by Brucella (B.) melitensis has been noticed in Germany. Patients predominantly originated from Middle East including Turkey and Syria. These circumstances afforded an opportunity to gain insights into the popu...

The irruption of gas and oil into the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon event fed a deep sea bacterial bloom that consumed hydrocarbons in the affected waters, formed a regional oxygen anomaly, and altered the microbiology of the region. In this work, we develop a coupled physical-metabolic model to assess the impact of mixing processes on these deep ocean bacterial communities and th...

One of the most challenging questions in evolutionary biology is how sex has evolved in the face of substantial fitness costs. In this study, we focus on the evolution of bacterial sex in the form of natural transformation, where cells take up exogenous DNA and integrate it into the genome. Besides the physiological cost of producing a DNA uptake system, transformation can potentially impose a ...