New Preprint!! Collective Stress Response

We are very excited that a part of Iago's PhD work is now available in bioRxiv!!

In this study, we discovered that B subtilis swarms collectively transit into biofilms when exposed to stress. We find that a phase transition, reminiscent to a process known as motility-induced phase separation (MIPS), underpins the initial stage of the transition.

https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.11.243733

Iago presented this story at an online meeting, hosted by the Society for Applied Microbiology (sfam).

Iago Grobas Micro-Talk from Society for Applied Microbiology on Vimeo.

Munehiro Asally : 15 Aug 2020 18:38 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Poster Award!!!

Iago won the Instiute of Physics Poster Award on Bioscience and Medical Physics!

Huge congrats to Iago!!

https://ioppublishing.org/news/announcing-the-winners-of-ioppposter/

Munehiro Asally : 02 Aug 2020 17:41 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

"Stamps for speedy, but controlled, bacterial growth

Our MeniFluidics paper, published in ACS Synthetic Biology has been featured in various news articles!

Here is a recent piece at Chemical & Engineering News. Thanks to Matt Devenport for interviewing Vasily and Munehiro and producing a very good layman sumary!

https://cen.acs.org/content/cen/articles/98/i27/Look-grow-Meniscus-channels-spur.html

Munehiro Asally : 14 Jul 2020 16:30 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

BEE Workshop 2020

Registration is now open for the BEE workshop 2020, which will be held on April 27-28, 2020.

We have an exciting list of speakers from academia and industry! There is also a section for selected talks, so please do submit your abstract if you are already doing bielectricity research.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/lifesci/research/beehive/bee_2020/

Munehiro Asally : 21 Jan 2020 13:09 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New papers!!

Exciting news! We have two new articles! Our hope is that these articles will inspire more research on bacterial cell electrophysiology.

"The Microbiologist's guide to bacterial membrane potential dynamics"

Our review on bacterial membrane potential dynamics is now online in Trends in Microbiology! In this article, we reviewed functional roles of bacterial membrane potential and discussed the need of further theoretical and experimental investigation.

https://www.cell.com/trends/microbiology/fulltext/S0966-842X(19)30323-3

"Rapid detection of proliferative bacteria by electrical stmulation"

Our protocol paper is also in press in bio-protocol! In this article, we provided a detailed protocol for the experiments we reported in PNAS (Startford et al, 2019). We proposed using this technique for rapid AST.

To describe the procedure, we got an inspiration from IKEA's graphic instruction:) (Great job, Conor!) Our hope is that this can be printed like a poster.

https://bio-protocol.org/e3508

Munehiro Asally : 15 Jan 2020 11:43 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The year of 2019

Looking back, this year has been busy with exciting news for the lab. Just several to highlights…

• The first paper from the lab has been published in PNAS!
  
• Then. another exiting story from the lab has been published in iScience!
• The very first PhD student, Marco Delise, successfully defended his thesis with minor correction! Marco is now up for an entrepreneurship program in London.
  
• The lab’s spinout company, Cytecom Ltd., launched its own website and presented at a show. The company began drawing attentions!
• An exciting paper with Vasily Kantsler has been posted in arXiv.
• A review paper on bacterial membrane potential dynamics has been accepted! A protocol paper on bacterial electrical stimulation has been accepted! (This is the first time in my entire career that I have two papers accepted but not published at once.)
• I was promoted to Associate Professor.
• And, most excitingly, many fascinating unpublished discoveries happened in the lab (stay tuned)! Thanks to the hard working lab members!!

That’s a lot for just a year! Sure, there have been many rejections and bad news for the lab in 2019 (as usual). But, this year was remarkable. Thanks everyone!

2020 is another year. We will keep the beginner’s mind (or literatuly stay being beginners for something) and try doing good science!

Munehiro Asally : 16 Dec 2019 10:23 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

FHN bacteria model

The script for the FHN bacteria model has been posted to GitLab. The model was used in our recent paper, Startford et al, PNAS (2019).

GitLab page:

https://gitlab.com/asally-lab/bacteral-fhn-model/blob/master/FHNbacteriaModel.ipynb

paper:

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/19/9552

Munehiro Asally : 05 Dec 2019 13:20 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem