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• And, most excitingly, many fascinating unpublished discoveries happened in the lab (stay tuned)!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

Doctor of Philosophy!

The first PhD student of the Asally lab, Marco Delise, successfully defended his thesis and turns into Dr Marco Dlise!! (with minor corrections)

Marco is now in Entrepreneur First program, exploring innovation ideas. https://www.joinef.com/

We are all very proud that he defended well, very sad that he is leaving us, and very excited that he is up for next crazy ideas!

People are the real "products" of the lab.

Munehiro Asally : 11 Oct 2019 09:52 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

MeniFluidics! An easy and powerful technique for patterning microbes

New preprint is now available at arXiv at https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.01595.

This is an exciting interdisciplinary study in collaboration with Vasily Kantsler (Associate Professor, Department of Physics, University of Warwick)!

We present a new easy and robust method of patterning bacterial colonies for biomaterial engineering, synthetic biology, bio-art and basic research into microbial ecology and biophysics. An exciting feature of this method is that it is very easy. It also doesn't need any expensive tool. We hope that this method will unleash the potential of microbial pattern engineering!

Munehiro Asally : 05 Oct 2019 19:05 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Talent wanted!

We are recruiting for a 6-month Research Fellow. It's short. But, it will be intense and rewarding.

If you are interested in working on bacterial electrophysiology or antimicrobial resistance, here is an opportunity. For more details, please see the link below.

Dead Line: 22 September 2019

https://atsv7.wcn.co.uk/search_engine/jobs.cgi?owner=5062452&ownertype=fair&jcode=1824576&vt_template=1457&adminview=1

Munehiro Asally : 05 Sep 2019 09:53 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Electrically induced bacterial membrane potential dynamics

Our "zapping" paper (Stratford et al, 2019) has been highlited in various news outlets!

Munehiro Asally : 01 Aug 2019 09:01 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem