Microbial Population Biology

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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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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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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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1) Many of your blogs are becoming woefully out of date.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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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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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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