Beautiful morning in the Smokies at SEPEEG 2025. Listening to Fisherโs geometric model, with coffee, in the mountain air, just hits different. ๐๏ธ โ๏ธ
04.10.2025 13:56 โ ๐ 0 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0@megbehri.bsky.social
Assistant Professor @VanderbiltU BioSci โ๏ธ | Dog mom ๐and sunset appreciator ๐ | Experimental evolution of microbes in stressful and structured environments ๐งซ๐งช | microbial epimutations ๐งฌ|
Beautiful morning in the Smokies at SEPEEG 2025. Listening to Fisherโs geometric model, with coffee, in the mountain air, just hits different. ๐๏ธ โ๏ธ
04.10.2025 13:56 โ ๐ 0 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Our 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?! Thatโs 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, Iโm happy to give you some!
28.09.2025 15:44 โ ๐ 0 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0Always a great night when we can get dressed up, wear goofy flamingo hats, and raise money for an amazing cause! Another great Mad Hatter in the books for the Nashville SAC @nashvilleSAC! (Yes, we did win best couple hats!)
28.09.2025 03:57 โ ๐ 3 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0Eis: machine learning to reverse-engineer #evolution. Brassington (@amandalea.bsky.social): Evolutionary mismatch. Rose: Genome-scale models. Bruder (@megbehri.bsky.social): Computational & experimental microbial evolution.
26.09.2025 13:36 โ ๐ 7 ๐ 2 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0No worries, just for anyone else who is curious I guess..
20.08.2025 22:10 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Iโm also a yes.
20.08.2025 21:39 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0Really 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.
Owenโs 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
#ISMEJournal by @ofsheff.bsky.social et al from @jakemckinlay.bsky.social
academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...
Carl is an awesome science communicator. Heโs finishing up his PhD focused on bacterial epigenetics and evolution. Heโs a rockstar at applying Bayesian statistical approaches to large omics datasets!
22.06.2025 18:16 โ ๐ 4 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Really proud of PhD Candidate Carl Stone, advocating for science and scientific funding by wiring this opinion piece for his hometown newspaper in Minnesota.
22.06.2025 18:14 โ ๐ 20 ๐ 6 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0An Anaerobic Pathogen Rewires Host Metabolism to Fuel Oxidative Growth in the Inflamed Gut https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.31.657111v1
01.06.2025 05:19 โ ๐ 7 ๐ 2 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Truly awful. Iโm so sorry you and your lab are getting targeted by all this.
14.05.2025 19:06 โ ๐ 4 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Given 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? Thatโs it? No one else wants answers?!?!
09.05.2025 22:30 โ ๐ 15 ๐ 7 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Very cool new work by @megbehri.bsky.social and William F. McLaughlin:
Starvation drives co-existence in cross-feeding bacterial populations
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Of course! It was a fun paper to write because we got to really dig in and think about Rho (and mutations that evolve in Rho) in bacteria other than our usual E. coli! Especially, the gram positives where Rhi can have such an impact on development too!
06.03.2025 21:29 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Thanks for the Signal Boost, รkos!
Weโre so happy to see our review discussing Rho as an evolutionary capacitor out in Transcription!
Itโs an exciting follow up to our recent research article & opens up a discussion of where we expect evolutionary capacitors to exist b/w the genotype/phenotype gap.
Excited to announce our latest manuscript on bioRxiv! Led by PhD student Owen Hale, we anaerobically examine the mutation rates of aerotolerant anaerobic species of Lactic Acid Bacteria: Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus crispatus, and Lactococcus lactis.
01.03.2025 02:39 โ ๐ 7 ๐ 2 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Congratulations to @emmiamueller.bsky.social on:
"Residence time structures microbial communities through niche partitioning"
Now out in Ecology Letters:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Really enjoyed visiting NC State for the Genetics and Genomics seminar yesterday! Got to chat with a great group of researchers, heard awesome science, and the food scene in Raleigh was pretty yum! ๐งฌ๐งซ
11.02.2025 14:05 โ ๐ 3 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0I am confident that scientific societies will play an unusually important role in the coming years. If you are a microbiologist of any kind, please consider joining @asm.org if you haven't already. There are many ways to get involved, including advocacy.
To learn more:
asm.org/About-ASM/Vo...
To all the other professors who also opened their labs in the middle of COVID and are now going to go up for tenure during this mess, I see you. ๐คฆโโ๏ธ
23.01.2025 03:10 โ ๐ 3 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Applications are open for the Microbial Population Biology GRS and GRC!
The GRS is a fun day for grad students and postdocs to network before the full GRC starts, and is co-chaired this year by me and Laura Suttenfield
Get your applications in by Jan 15! #evosky ๐ฆ ๐งช
www.grc.org/microbial-po...
Three members of a research team are pictured in a laboratory. The man on the left wears a blue button- down shirt, the woman in the center has long red hair, wearing a blue and white patterned blouse. On the right stands another woman with brown hair, wearing a tan blazer over a black top. They stand in front of lab equipment and cables.
Three members of a research team are pictured in a laboratory. The man on the left wears a blue button- down shirt, while the two women beside nim, with brown and red hair, respectively, are dressed in professional attire, smiling at the camera. Laboratory shelves with various bottles and containers are visible in the background.
Excited for the upcoming #VUEvoMag Magazine! " @megbehri.bsky.social reached out to me a few weeks after my lab opened at Vanderbilt with this interesting observation about solution pH, but wondered if there was a way we could measure pH inside cells," Bratton recalled. loom.ly/a1hXE2o
15.11.2024 18:55 โ ๐ 4 ๐ 1 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Introducing our labโs newest Ph.D candidate William McLaughlin. William is doing an awesome microbial systems ecology project thatโs already turning out some cool results. Keep an eye out for this rising star.
21.10.2024 16:44 โ ๐ 3 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Lastly, we have a great press release out by Vandyโs own
Dr. Andy Flick, so share it with your friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues!
t.co/4mEDyu5R4R
And if you love this type of research, we have lots of data on deck and are always looking for postdocs!
t.co/DEj9U2ROIl
There is of course more to our story so you will need to read the paper!
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
We also found the Arg -> His (Rho R109H) substitution in nature! Particularly in species that often navigate pH fluctuations like insect gut -> human blood or sponge microbiome-> ocean.
A great example of how lab evolution can provide insight into the natural world!
Next we collaborated with @bpbratton and found that the Rho/YdcI double mutant maintains an elevated intracellular pH, which should minimize the plasticity in mutant Rho function and maintain Rho in its alternate state thatโs observed in higher pH!
23.09.2024 17:41 โ ๐ 0 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0