Megan Behringer

Seriously, RN would be perfect too.

Just no more bloggers about pseudoscience, pseudonutrition, and vibes.

In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨

Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!)

Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇

doi.org/10.1093/fems...

Is it too much to ask to just have a freaking physician as surgeon general?!

The PopGen Vienna Seminar series schedule is ready for the next term (March-June). It's jam-packed with fantastic speakers in #evolution, #genetics, #genomics, #popgen, and more! Details and streaming link signup can be found on our website popgen-vienna.at/news/seminars/

Thank you!!

There’s a new Ph.D. In the house! Congratulations Dr. Stone @starlcone.bsky.social ! First doctoral student from the Behringer Lab! Amazing presentation today on the bacterial methylome and longitudinal rbTnSeq. We’re immensely proud of him!

Excited to share this new Preprint from our lab led by PhD Candidate Carl Stone (defending Tuesday).

Here we present a framework for longitudinal rbTn-Seq and apply it to the Microbial extended growth curve to resolve the fitness seascape through growth, death, and long-term stationary phase!

We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT

Historical contingency limits adaptive diversification in a spatially structured environment Abstract. Understanding how genotype-by-environment (G × E) interactions influence evolutionary trajectories and contribute to historical contingency is ke

Historical contingency limits adaptive diversification in a spatially structured environment

@evolletters.bsky.social from @megbehri.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

Now that we’re back, I want to promote this awesome work from our group led by former UG Researcher, Gillian Patton (now a Ph.D student at Wash U) published in Evol. Letters!

We blocked a first step mutation that typically promotes biofilm formation to see how this roadblock influences evolution.

Attending the most important college football event of the year. #PopTartsBowl

Behringer Lab put a heck of a holiday door submission together with Skiing the Finess Slopes. Even has a little E. coli fishing for jackpot mutations! ⛷️ 🧫 🧬

Thank you! It’s been an amazing process and the lab is really excited about it!

This is a huge honor and we’re so excited to get started on this new direction for our group stemming from the work of William McLaughlin, a Ph.D. Candidate in our lab!

Major thanks to our scout, Paul Turner and Hypothesis Fund for seeing the potential in this project! Time to get to work! 🧬🧫🧪

We suspect that the very elevated mutation rate of L. acidophilus is influenced by its domestication status - we observe many losses of DNA repair genes across the species. Thus, the mutation rates of L. acidophilus may be actively evolving and an ideal species for studying mutation rate evolution.

We found that LAB, and L. Acidophilus in particular, have very high mutation rates.
Mutations are quite biased towards G:C ➡️ A:T and A:T➡️G:C; and this is very apparent in L. acidophilus near the ori.

Elevated rates and biased spectra of mutations in anaerobically cultured lactic acid bacteria | mBio Despite Earth’s oxygen-free origins and the abundance of microorganisms that thrive without oxygen, little is known about the rates and patterns of mutations in anaerobic species. This study directly ...

Excited to share our latest paper led by Ph.D. Candidate, Owen Hale, titled Elevated rates and Biased Spectra of Mutations in Anaerobically Cultured Lactic Acid Bacteria out now in mBio!

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Beautiful morning in the Smokies at SEPEEG 2025. Listening to Fisher’s geometric model, with coffee, in the mountain air, just hits different. 🏔️ ☕️

Our lab is hiring!!
We are looking for a research assistant who will be involved with our experimental evolution studies on how stress affects population dynamics in E. coli.
Great opportunity for recent grads!
E-mail for more info and apply here:
ecsr.fa.us2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Hey Zach! First, you talk about me in class?! That’s incredibly flattering! Second, because of the meaning behind the event (a benefit to support survivors of SA) it might not be the most appropriate for class. But if you want a casual photo to show scientists as people, I’m happy to give you some!

Eis: machine learning to reverse-engineer #evolution. Brassington (@amandalea.bsky.social): Evolutionary mismatch. Rose: Genome-scale models. Bruder (@megbehri.bsky.social): Computational & experimental microbial evolution.

No worries, just for anyone else who is curious I guess..

I’m also a yes.

Danone North America Invests in the Future of Microbiome Science with 2024-2025 Fellowship Awards /PRNewswire/ -- Danone North America, a leading purpose-driven food and beverage company and one of the world's largest Certified B Corporations®, is proud to...

Really proud of Owen Hale, a Ph.D. Candidate in our group who was awarded the Gut Microbiome, Yogurt and Probiotic Fellowship by Danone North America.

Owen’s research focuses on E. coli / Lactic Acid Bacteria interactions!

www.prnewswire.com/news-release...

Microbial cross-feeding stabilized by segregation of a dependent mutant from its independent ancestor Abstract. Microbial gene loss is hypothesized to be beneficial when gene function is costly, and the gene product can be replaced via cross-feeding from a

Microbial cross-feeding stabilized by segregation of a dependent mutant from its independent ancestor

#ISMEJournal by @ofsheff.bsky.social et al from @jakemckinlay.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Carl is an awesome science communicator. He’s finishing up his PhD focused on bacterial epigenetics and evolution. He’s a rockstar at applying Bayesian statistical approaches to large omics datasets!

Really proud of PhD Candidate Carl Stone, advocating for science and scientific funding by wiring this opinion piece for his hometown newspaper in Minnesota.

An Anaerobic Pathogen Rewires Host Metabolism to Fuel Oxidative Growth in the Inflamed Gut https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.31.657111v1

Truly awful. I’m so sorry you and your lab are getting targeted by all this.

Given that there are 435 voting members of Congress, I would have hoped for more than 25% of House members to support American innovation in science and technology. 112? That’s it? No one else wants answers?!?!