Author: Sara Mitri

Go read about our latest work:

Andrea Dos Santos has led the work on the first one, together with Rita Di Martino and Samuele Testa. The work shows how growth media can sometimes be inhibitory to bacteria, which can make it hard to identify their interactions with other species. Read more here.

Philippe Piccardi submitted this one just before leaving the lab, work that he started with Géraldine Alberti for her Master project, in collaboration with Jake Alexander from ETHZ. We show that microbial communities can promote the growth of invasive species when the environment is harsh, but invasions become harder as these communities co-evolve. Read more here.

Congratulations to all involved!

Welcome to Michela Lain! She joins us from Italy to work on biofilms in Metal Working Fluids.

We are looking for a postdoc to work on modelling the ecology and evolution of microbial communities! The position is relatively flexible in topic, but the chosen candidate will be expected to integrate their work tightly with experimental data and participate in teaching and supervising students. Funding is available for up to 3 years. More details and the application procedure can be found here. Deadline to apply is February 15th.

We’re really happy to welcome Rupali, a PhD student in Amrita Hazra’s lab in IISER Pune. She is visiting us until Christmas to work on spatial patterning in E. coli vitamin auxotrophs and their interactions with our bacterial community.

Yesterday, Philippe Piccardi became the first PhD graduate of the lab! He gave a beautiful public defense, followed by the best (and first ;)) post-covid party ever! Congratulations Dr. Piccardi!!

Shota’s paper is out in the Journal of Royal Society Interface!! Well done Shota, and a big thank you to Mauro for the wonderful collaboration!

Read more here to find out how fluctuations in environmental conditions together with demographic noise can exclude even the fittest species in some communities, thereby increasing community beta-diversity.

Congratulations to Pablo Guridi for a well-deserved prize! His thesis, submitted in January was judged the best of his year among Master students of Molecular Life Sciences!

Pablo developed mathematical and individual-based models for two projects: drug-delivering bacteria following a circadian rhythm, in the context of the iGEM competition, and bacterial community breeding in our lab. Well done, Pablo!!

We are really excited to be expanding the lab again! Oliver Meacock just started a postdoc to work on exploring how our four oil-degrading species form biofilms. We are looking forward to doing some beautiful microscopy together!

Marina Sudário has also joined the team to set up a very cool experiment involving assembly lines of chemostats with different species. Stay tuned!

Are you looking for a postdoc position to study how different species of bacteria grow together to form beautiful patterns? Want to spend time close to lake and mountains in Lausanne, Switzerland?

The project will involve quantifying biofilms, monitoring biofilm formation using confocal microscopy and studying the role of different species and their environment in spatial pattern formation. We are looking for a motivated candidate with a strong background in microbial ecology and evolution or a related field. Experience with microfluidics, microscopy and/or computational modeling would be a plus.

Apply here before September 1st: https://tinyurl.com/y4vd8mp9 and do get in touch if you have any questions.

Shota has just posted his latest work to bioRXiv! The work was done through a very fruitful collaboration with Mauro Mobilia, thanks Mauro for all your time and effort!

Shota set up a mathematical model to study how species interact in environments that fluctuate between harsh and benign conditions. His results show that it’s very difficult to predict a priori how the frequency of fluctuations will affect pairwise species interactions. He has found, though, that the strength of these interactions are good predictors of overall species diversity in microbial communities of up to 10 species. Read more here.