Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomics #LAMG16: Day 4 and Random Thoughts

Only three talks on the last day.  First up was Jordan Parker “Microbiome Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) Benefit Students and Faculty”.  Great talk about how we need to move from cookbook labs to discovery-based research, talked about the “I Microbiologist” textbook.  The challenge is to scale research to class-sized groups.  She described the competency-based …

Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes #LAMG16: Day 3

First up today was Rachel Dutton talking about “Horizontal gene transfer in Cheese”.  She began by talking about cheese as a great model system for understanding the principles behind microbial community formation.  Many replicates, controlled conditions, manipulable etc.  After doing initial 16S/ITS survey they cultured representatives of all the dominant genera in the cheeses and …

Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomics #LAMG16 Report: Day 2

Esther Singer opened the day talking about “Metagenomics to Reveal Correlations between Switchgrass Ecotypes and their Microbial Communities”.  She told a nice story about the ecotype-specificity of the rhizosphere and phyllosphere microbial communities.  I was surprised that for some bacteria this was evident even at the phylum level… so big differences. Daria Van Tyne “Changes …