New paper in iScience

How can bacteria do quality control of their offspring spores?

Quality control is an inherently complex task because quality is difficult to define and requires an integration of multi-dimentional inputs. In this work, we reported that electrical polarization of developing spores (forespores) is coupled with a quality-control system.

Many congrats to the team, especially Teja and Jonatan!

Teja was the first member of the lab and it's great to see this work is now published in iScience, a new open-access interdisciplinary journal by Cell Press.

https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(19)30181-6

Munehiro Asally : 05 Jun 2019 14:20 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New paper in PNAS

The first Asally lab paper is now published in PNAS! Congrats to the team!!

In this work, we 'zapped' bacterial cells with electricity and monitored membrane potential dynamics. We found proliferating cells and inhibitted cells respond in an apparent opposite directions to an identical electrical input.

Electrically induced bacterial membrane-potential dynamics correspond to cellular proliferation capacity

James P. Stratford, Conor L. A. Edwards, Manjari J. Ghanshyam, Dmitry Malyshev, Marco A. Delise, Yoshikatsu Hayashi, and Munehiro Asally

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/04/17/1901788116

Munehiro Asally : 29 Apr 2019 14:55 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Physics of Micro–organisms

Iago and Jonatan will be presenting at the Physics of Microorganisms! Excited to share our on-going works!!

IOP conference

Munehiro Asally : 06 Apr 2019 23:59 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Royal Society International Exchanges

Great news!! We were awarded an international exchange grant to foster a new colloboration with Kano-sensei and Ishiguro-sensei at Tohoku University, Japan. We will be developing ideas to design bacteria-inspired robotic engineering system. Yes, you read it right, robotics! The funding will cover travels between Japan and UK.

http://www.cmplx.riec.tohoku.ac.jp/

It is also worth noting that this special interaction with Ishiguro-Kano lab started by a JSPS-funded meeting at Cambridge. So, a huge thank you to JSPS London as well for making this exciting collobariton to begin!

http://www.jsps.org/

Munehiro Asally : 11 Mar 2019 14:29 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Bio–Electrical Engineering Workshop

Registration is now open for the 2nd BEE workshop at Warwick! We have an excellent list of speakers!

Please register!

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/lifesci/research/beehive/bee_hub/2nd_workshop_registration/

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME

28 March 2018:
9:30 – 10:20 Registration
10:20 – 10:30 Introduction and workshop motivation (O. Soyer)

10:30 – 12:00 Session 1
25min PPT18 – Shelley Minteer (U of Utah), ‘Mechanisms of Extracellular Electron Transfer: From Methods of Evaluation to Materials for Promotion’
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT19 – Pat Unwin (U of Warwick)
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT20 – Minsu Kim (Emory) 'Tight regulation of electrically-charged substrate transport'
5min Questions and changeover

12:00 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30 – 15:00 Session 2
25min PPT1 – Joff Silberg (Rice University), ‘Using synthetic protein electron carriers to control bacterial metabolism’
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT2 – Mustafa Djamgoz (Imperial College) ‘Bioelectricity of cancer’
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT3 - selected talk.
5min Questions and changeover

15:00 – 15:30 Coffee

15:30 – 17:00 Session 3
25min PPT4 – Robert Bradley (Imperial College), 'Engineering electroactivity for signalling, energy, and electrosynthesis'
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT5 – Munehiro Asally (U of Warwick)
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT6 – selected talk.
5min Questions and changeover

17:00 – 18:00 Coffee and Open discussion

18:00 – 19:00 Poster Session and Drinks

19:00 – Late Dinner

29 March 2019:
9:30 – 11:00 Session 4
25min PPT10 – Teuta Pilizota (U of Edinburgh), ‘Single-cell bacterial electrophysiology’
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT11 – selected talk
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT12 – Sonia Antoranz Contera (U of Oxford)
5min Questions and changeover

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee

11:30 – 13:00 Session 5
25min PPT13 – Orkun Soyer (U of Warwick), 'Understanding metabolism as an electrical process'
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT14 – Matthias Heinemann (U of Groningen)
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT15 – selected talk.
5min Questions and changeover

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 Session 6
25min PPT10 – Murray Grant (U of Warwick)
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT11 – Giovanni Sena (Imperial College), ‘Feel the force: root electrotropism in Arabidopsis’
5min Questions and changeover
25min PPT12 – selected talk.
5min Questions and changeover

15:30 – 17:00 Coffee/Cake and Open discussion

Munehiro Asally : 27 Feb 2019 17:24 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Welcome Elena!

We are welcoming another Erasmus+ student from Spain. Welcome Elena!

Elena will be with us for 3month to work on a biofilm project.

Hopefully the UK will stay in the Erasmus program after brexit!

Munehiro Asally : 26 Feb 2019 14:58 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New preprint!

How bacteria response to electrical shock depends on their healthyness!

Check it out!!

https://doi.org/10.1101/542746

Munehiro Asally : 09 Feb 2019 10:33 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem