Microbial Population Biology

Open access blog network of courses focused on the population biology of bacteria and viruses

Entries from April 2008

Microbial quadrathlon: the quest for the Giant Microbe Championship

April 29th, 2008 · No Comments

The motility and growth curve data from your environmental isolates are in, and they can be found here:
micr-713-2008-growth-curves.xls
713-swim-and-swarm-motility-spring-2008.xls

With this spreadsheet, you now have enough data to figure out who is the lucky winner of the grand prize for the second running of the Bacterial Tri(quad)athlon. The prize can be picked from the following site: http://www.giantmicrobes.com.
Your [...]

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Tags: General

On the evolution of virulence; how microbial communities are structured

April 29th, 2008 · No Comments

On 4/24 and today I showed slides describing some of the body of theory on the evolution of virulence. These slides are here: http://micropopbio.org/files/2007/12/713-lecture-9-evol-of-virulence.ppt
I also presented results from my old paper with Paul Ewald:
http://micropopbio.org/cooper/files/2007/11/cooper-et-al-2002-proc-r-soc.pdf
You all presented very interesting papers as riffs on the theme of why virulence might evolve. Please post these articles [...]

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Tags: General

Summary of your presentations on community interactions in space and/or time

April 17th, 2008 · 4 Comments

All,
Nice job on choosing papers.  Here is a summary of what I heard.  Please comment on this post to add to, correct, or question my brief overview.
All readings can be found at:
http://micropopbio.org/cooper/2008/04/17/student-chosen-readings-for-evolution-of-community-structure-in-space-or-time/
In chronological order of publication,
1) Dave, who chose Bull JJ Molineaux IJ, Rice WR. 1991. Selection of benevolence in a host-parasite system.  Evolution 45:875-82.
They [...]

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Blog contributions needed, and evolution of cooperation and antagonism in structured populations

April 14th, 2008 · No Comments

To do this week:
1) Many of your blogs are becoming woefully out of date.  Please post 1) on Turner et al phi6, and specifically your likes/dislikes of these designs, and 2) on your digest of the Velicer et al. Myxo article that you chose to present on Thursday.   Please do so ASAP.
2) Please read the [...]

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Tags: General

Cooperation and cheating papers for this week

April 6th, 2008 · No Comments

Class,
I have posted the 2 papers that you are to read for this week, as well as some supplementary papers that may help you understand the Myxococcus xanthus experiments.
Vaughn will be lecturing on Tues. on this material to help get you started, but feel free to start reading.
Steffen

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More great new articles FYI

April 2nd, 2008 · No Comments

Check out the latest blog on mutation by Olivia Judson: http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/
Last week, she talked about the poorly studied, rare group of mutations that are beneficial, and this week, she talks about the potential for mutational hotspots.  As always, it’s written very well and for the public.
Also, check out this wacky study: the airborne microbial metagenome, [...]

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Tags: General