All Legionella longbeachae strains, both serogroups of L. bozemanii, and three strains of L. anisa reproducibly infected washed Tetrahymena pyriformis at 30 degrees C. L. pneumophila serogroup 1 strains infected T. pyriformis less reproducibly than did L. longbeachae. Low-level concentrations of nutrients in cocultures inhibited infection. Four L. micdadei strains and L. anisa ATCC 35292 failed...

The adaptation of a population to a new environment is a result of selection operating on a suite of stochastically occurring mutations. This article presents an analytical approach to understanding the population dynamics during adaptation, specifically addressing a system in which periods of growth are separated by selection in bottlenecks. The analysis derives simple expressions for the aver...

Pseudogymnoascus destructans, the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome in hibernating bats, has spread across eastern North America over the past decade and decimated bat populations. The saprotrophic growth of P. destructans may help to perpetuate the white-nose syndrome epidemic, and recent model predictions suggest that sufficiently reducing the environmental growth of P. destructans could...

Integrated Discrete Multiple Organ Co-culture (IDMOC) is emerging as an in-vitro alternative to in-vivo animal models for pharmacology studies. IDMOC allows dose-response relationships to be investigated at the tissue and organoid levels, yet, these relationships often exhibit responses that are far more complex than the binary responses often measured in whole animals. To accommodate departure...

Genomes of two filamentous benthic cyanobacteria were obtained from cocultures obtained from two freshwater lakes. The cultures were obtained by first growing cyanobacterial trichome on solid medium, followed by subculturing in freshwater media. Subsequent shotgun sequencing, de novo assembly, and genomic binning yielded almost complete genomes of Oscillatoriales USR 001 and Nostoc sp. MBR 210.

Heterotypic functional materials with compositional and topographical properties that vary spatiotemporally on the micro- or nanoscale are common in nature. However, fabricating such complex materials in the laboratory remains challenging. Here we describe a method to continuously create microfibres with tunable morphological, structural and chemical features using a microfluidic system consist...

The freshwater cyanobacteria, Microcystis sp., commonly form large colonies with bacteria embedded in their mucilage. Positive and negative interactions between Microcystis species and their associated bacteria have been reported. However, the potential role of bacteria in the production and degradation of cyanobacterial secondary metabolites has not been investigated. In this study, a Microcys...

The population dynamics of Aspergillus flavus, shaped in part by intraspecific competition, influence the likelihood and severity of crop aflatoxin contamination. Competition for nutrients may be one factor modulating intraspecific interactions, but the influences of specific types and concentrations of nutrients on competition between genotypes of A. flavus have not been investigated. Competit...

Microscale technologies are emerging as powerful tools for tissue engineering and biological studies. In this review, we present an overview of these technologies in various tissue engineering applications, such as for fabricating 3D microfabricated scaffolds, as templates for cell aggregate formation, or for fabricating materials in a spatially regulated manner. In addition, we give examples o...

The ruminal cellulolytic bacteria Ruminococcus flavefaciens FD-1 and Fibrobacter succinogenes S85 coexisted in substrate-excess coculture with about equal population size, but R. flavefaciens outcompeted F. succinogenes for cellobiose in the substrate-limited cocultures whether the two strains were coinoculated or a steady-state culture of F. succinogenes was challenged by R. flavefaciens. This...