The microbial symbiosis group at UW-Madison comprises over 20 laboratories, including those of four new faculty that were hired as part of the Symbiosis Cluster. This interdisciplinary, multidepartmental group brings together over 100 faculty and students from departments across the university. Monthly research presentations take place on the third Monday of each month, in which a host lab presents their work and leads discussion. Other periodic events for the group include small conferences and social gatherings. To get involved, contact a participating investigator, come to the next meeting, or e-mail Alicia Cramer-Carlson to get added to our e-mail listserv!   Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center UW-Madison The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center will conduct basic, genomics-based research to design the microbial and plant systems needed to realize the potential of biofuels. Combining innovative science, a critical mass of natural assets and the corporate horsepower to build and advance a new bioenergy economy, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center will become a worldwide center of excellence for research and development of cellulosic ethanol and other bioenergy products. In support of this vision, GLBRC activities will be led by experts in plant biology, microbiology, molecular or cell biology, biochemistry, protein design, engineering, computer sciences, systems analysis, and ecology.

Recent Symbiosis Publications fromParticipating Laboratories Scott JJ, Oh DC, Yuceer MC, Klepzig KD, Clardy J, Currie CR.Bacterial protection of beetle-fungus mutualism. Science. 2008 Oct 3;322(5898):63   Lopez R, Demick KP, Mansfield JM, Paulnock DM.Type I IFNs play a role in early resistance, but subsequent susceptibility, to the African trypanosomes. J Immunol. 2008 Oct 1;181(7):4908-17.   Cardoza YJ, Moser JC, Klepzig KD, Raffa KF.Multipartite Symbioses Among Fungi, Mites, Nematodes, and the Spruce Beetle, Dendroctonus rufipennis. Environ Entomol. 2008 Aug;37(4):956-63.   Ruby EG.Symbiotic conversations are revealed under genetic interrogation. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2008 Oct;6(10):752-62.   Cloud-Hansen KA, Kuehner JN, Tong L, Miller S, Handelsman J.Money, sex, and drugs: a case study to teach the genetics of antibiotic resistance. CBE Life Sci Educ. 2008 Fall;7(3):302-9.   Zarnowski R, Cooper KG, Brunold LS, Calaycay J, Woods JP.Histoplasma capsulatum secreted gamma-glutamyltransferase reduces iron by generating an efficient ferric reductant. Environ Sci Technol. Mol Microbiol. 2008 Aug 29.   Hinckley GT, Johnson CJ, Jacobson KH, Bartholomay C, McMahon KD, McKenzie D, Aiken JM, Pedersen JA. Persistence of pathogenic prion protein during simulated wastewater treatment processes. Environ Sci Technol. 2008 Jul 15;42(14):5254-9.   Chun CK, Troll JV, Koroleva I, Brown B, Manzella L, Snir E, Almabrazi H, Scheetz TE, Fatima Bonaldo M, Casavant TL, Soares MB, Ruby EG, and McFall-Ngai MJ Effects of colonization, luminescence, and autoinducer on host transcription during development of the squid-vibrio association. PNAS. 2008 Aug 12. Vol: 105. No:32. Pgs:11323-11328   Peterson SB, Warnecke F, Madejska J, McMahon KD, Hugenholtz P.Environmental distribution and population biology of Candidatus Accumulibacter, a primary agent of biological phosphorus removal. Environ Microbiol. 2008 Jul 17. [Epub ahead of print]]   Borlee BR, Geske GD, Robinson CJ, Blackwell HE, Handelsman J.Quorum-sensing signals in the microbial community of the cabbage white butterfly larval midgut. ISME J. 2008 Jul 24. [Epub ahead of print]   Jahn CE, Charkowski AO, Willis DK. Evaluation of isolation methods and RNA integrity for bacterial RNA quantitation. J Microbiol Methods. 2008 Jul 15. [Epub ahead of print]   Liang C, Read HW, Balser TC. Reliability of Muramic Acid as a Bacterial Biomarker is Influenced by Methodological Artifacts from Streptomycin. Microb Ecol. 2008 Jun 28. [Epub ahead of print]   Little AE, Currie CR. Black yeast symbionts compromise the efficiency of antibiotic defenses in fungus-growing ants. Current Microbiology. 2008 May;DOI 10.1007/s00284-008-9168-y   Little A, Robinson C, Peterson SB, Raffa KF, Handelsman J.Rules of Engagement: Interspecies Interactions that Regulate Microbial Communities. Ecology. 2008 May;89(5):1216-22.   Zarnowski R, Dobrzyn A, Ntambi JM, Woods JP. Ferrous, But Not Ferric, Iron Maintains Homeostasis in Histoplasma capsulatum Triacylglycerides. Annual Review of Microbiology. 2008. 62:375–401   Kent AD, Yannarell AC, Rusak JA, Triplett EW, McMahon KD. Synchrony in aquatic microbial community dynamics. ISME J. 2007 May;1(1):38-47   Charles E. Cowles and Heidi Goodrich-Blair The Xenorhabdus nematophila nilABC Genes Confer the Ability of Xenorhabdus spp. To Colonize Steinernema carpocapsae Nematodes J. Bacteriol. 2008 190: 4121-4128. Link to Cover Photo   Zarnowski R, Dobrzyn A, Ntambi JM, Woods JP. Ferrous, But Not Ferric, Iron Maintains Homeostasis in Histoplasma capsulatum Triacylglycerides. Curr Microbiol. 2008 May 28.   Yang S, Peng Q, Zhang Q, Yi X, Choi CJ, Reedy RM, Charkowski AO, Yang CH. Dynamic regulation of GacA in type III secretion, pectinase gene expression, pellicle formation, and pathogenicity of Dickeya dadantii (Erwinia chrysanthemi 3937). Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 2008 Jan;21(1):133-42.   Zhang MM, Poulsen M, Currie CR. Symbiont recognition of mutualistic bacteria by Acromyrmex leaf-cutting ants. ISME J. 2007 Aug;1(4):313-20. Epub 2007 Jun 7.   Dyer DH, Wessely V, Forest KT, Lan Q. Three-dimensional structure/function analysis of SCP-2-like2 reveals differences among SCP-2 family members. J Lipid Res. 2008 Mar;49(3):644-53. Epub 2007 Dec 15.   Felnagle EA, Jackson EE, Chan YA, Podevels AM, Berti AD, McMahon MD, Thomas MG. Nonribosomal peptide synthetases involved in the production of medically relevant natural products. Mol Pharm. 2008 Mar-Apr;5(2):191-211.   Richards GR, Herbert EE, Park Y, Goodrich-Blair H. Xenorhabdus nematophila lrhA is necessary for motility, lipase activity, toxin expression, and virulence toward Manduca sexta insects. J Bacteriol. 2008 May 23.   Yap MN, Yang CH, Charkowski AO The Response regulator HrpY of Dickeya dadantii 3937 regulates virulence genes not linked to the hrp cluster. Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 2008 Mar;21(3):304-14.   Mandel MJ, Stabb EV, Ruby EG Comparative genomics-based investigation of resequencing targets in Vibrio fischeri: focus on point miscalls and artefactual expansions. BMC Genomics. 2008 Mar 25;9:138.   See more publications...

Biological Imaging Lecture Series Tuesday : October 7th : 4pm : Room 341 Bardeen "Extracting Quantitative Information from Biological Images" Speaker - Anne Carpenter, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Abstract: Microscopy images contain abundant information about the properties of cells, organisms, or materials, but are rarely mined to their full potential. Automated image analysis can potentially produce rich, reproducible, quantitative results for hundreds of thousands of samples in an experiment. We are developing new methods for image analysis and data mining and releasing them to the scientific community via the CellProfiler open-source software project ( www.cellprofiler.org). Using CellProfiler’s flexible modules, researchers have set up automated image analysis pipelines to identify and measure the properties of a wide variety of biological “objects”, including mammalian, yeast, and Drosophila cells in culture, C. elegans worms, tumors in mice, yeast colonies, and yeast growth patches on agar. Multiple quantitative features of each object and each object’s sub-compartments are extracted, including size, shape, and the intensity and texture (smoothness) of each color channel in the original image. Because the human visual system actually uses a combination of features to identify objects with complex or subtle appearances, we have created a tool (CellProfiler Analyst) to enable supervised machine learning based on multiple features of each object. In this approach, a researcher spends a few hours training a computer to recognize the objects of interest in images. Machine learning algorithms then distinguish objects of interest based on the rich set of hundreds of CellProfiler-measured features. We have used this approach to readily score dozens of complex phenotypes in images automatically and quantitatively.

Chemical and Biological Engineering Seminar Tuesday : October 7th : 4pm : 1800 Engineering Hall. Please note room change. "Tuning Biological Signals and Multicellular Dynamics" Speaker -Anand Asthagirid, California Institute of Technology

Microbiology Student Seminar Wednesday : October 8th : 1205pm : 1520 Microbial Sciences "A single PUF protein with multiple modes of RNA binding" Speaker - Yvonne Koh (Professor Marv Wickens) AND "Two Birds with One Stone: Shared Pathway for the Biosynthesis of Platensimycin and Platencin" Speaker - Yvonne Koh (Professor Marv Wickens)

Distinguished Lectures in Microbiology Thursday : October 9th : 330pm : 1520 Microbial Sciences Building "Environmentally-regulated protein/protein interactions: A versatile way to build a biological switch" Speaker -Kevin Gardner, UTSW

2nd ASMConference on Beneficial Microbes: Beneficial Host-Microbial Interactions October 12 - 16, 2008, San Diego, California

Ph.D. THESIS DEFENSE SEMINAR Wednesday : October 15th : 230pm : 175 Biochemistry Addition, 433 Babcock Drive "Flock House Virus Induces Replication-Dependent Apoptosis by Depleting the Drosophila Inhibitor-of-Apoptosis Protein DIAP1" Speaker - ERIK W. SETTLES, Advisor: Paul Friesen

Distinguished Lectures in Microbiology Thursday : October 16th : 330pm : 1520 Microbial Sciences Building "Bacillus subtilis as an alternative model of bacterial RNA processing and decay" Speaker - Ciaron Condon, CNRS Paris

Contemporary Biochemistry Seminar Monday : October 20th : 330pm : Ebling Symposium Center, MSB "Biodiesel-like Fuels Produced by Biotechnology" Speaker - Alexander Steinbuchel, Westfalische Wilhelms-University of Munster, Germany

Paper of Interest Author: McFall-Ngai, M. Adaptive Immunity: Care for the Community Abstract -A memory-based immune system may have evolved in vertebrates because of the need to recognize and manage complex communities of beneficial microbes.