Heath Lab News

Yoel: phenotyping results from some novel mutants
Allison: Methylobacterium x rhizobium interactions

We say thanks and good luck to recent UIUC grad Riley Popp, who is moving to Chicago to start a PhD program at Northwestern University! There was plenty of long boarding in his honor.

From left to right: Mario, Abdel, Riley, Yoel, Sierra (kneeling), Izzy, Katy (kneeling), David, Crissy (kneeling), Allison, Karla
Riley teaches the youngins
Golden hour chilling at the elementary school

From left: Izzy, Yoel, Ivan, Riley, Allison, Abi, Katy, Sierra, Crissy

New collaborative paper on dual-GWAS and population genomics of host-symbiont interactions was just released at Molecular Ecology!

Check up on it!

It’s been a busy summer in the greenhouse this year! Clover and Rhizobium and Methylobacterium and Medicago and Sinorhizobium and soybean and Colletotrichum – oh my!

Left to right: Allison, Ivan, Riley, Crissy, and Izzy
Abdel, David, Izzy, Mario, Ivan, Riley, and Crissy
Riley and Yoel
Allison and Mario
Sierra and Rebecca

Rebecca (now at MacMaster), Liana Burghardt (Penn State) and Katy have a new paper out in Proceedings B on the signatures of host-microbe cooperation (rather than conflict) in the many loci underlying partner quality variation in Sinorhizobium!

Heath KD, Batstone RT, CerĂ³n Romero M, McMullen II JG. 2022. MGEs as the MVPs of Partner Quality Variation in Legume-Rhizobium Symbiosis. mBio, online.

FIG 1 Levels of horizontal mobility lead to nested interactions among the key players in the symbiosis between leguminous plants, nodulating rhizobial bacteria, the mobile genetic elements (MGEs) they host, and the symbiosis (sym) genes.

Rebecca starts her new position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at McMaster. Wish her luck!

Labake’s poster focuses on the correlations between easily measurable traits like chlorophyll content and nitrogen isotope ratios which more closely reflect biological nitrogen fixation.