Noah Houpt

Congrats!! 🎉🎊 you’re going to be great there :)

Next one in a storm of preprints from our lab's amazing scientists.. Recent-ex-postdoc, #newPI @cathyhernandez.bsky.social studied thermal ecology of marine bacteria isolated near New Haven. Turns out, response of this bacterium to temperatures is shaped by prophages!

#phagesky #microsky

Check out the latest from @cathyhernandez.bsky.social, where she shows that prophage activity underlies intraspecific variation in thermal tolerance AND evolutionary rescue in response to extreme temperature challenge.

This is one for prophage peeps and climate change peeps.

Excited to share this new Preprint from our lab led by PhD Candidate Carl Stone (defending Tuesday).

Here we present a framework for longitudinal rbTn-Seq and apply it to the Microbial extended growth curve to resolve the fitness seascape through growth, death, and long-term stationary phase!

Wow, welcome! Hope you can visit us at the Turner Lab! And hope it’s healing for you to spend some time here.

Mutations in filamentous bacteriophages spark eco-evolutionary feedbacks in Pseudomonas aeruginosa https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.21.699487v1

Mutations in filamentous bacteriophages spark eco-evolutionary feedbacks in Pseudomonas aeruginosa https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.21.699487v1

Thanks for reading and feel free to send me any questions you may have about the work! (10/10)

We feel our work is just the tip of the iceberg.

Filamentous phages are common, particularly in P. aeruginosa, and are able to drive ecologically and clinically important selection in bacterial populations! (9/10)

Overall, our work shows that prophage evolution can drive eco-evolutionary feedbacks across a wide range of population densities.

Further, the pleiotropic consequence of these feedbacks (twitching loss, resistance to lytic phages) are important for bacterial infections. (8/10)

Figure demonstrating that bacterial isolates from populations where hyperactive phages emerged had reduced twitch motility and reduced susceptibility to a type-IV-pilus-targeting lytic phage.

On the bacterial side, every population where hyperactive phage emerged ended up with mutations in type-IV-pilus genes (the phage's cell receptor), reduced twitch motility, and resistance to an obligately lytic phage with potential for use in phage therapy. (7/10)

Figure summarizing the results of sequencing hyperactive filamentous phage isolates derived from either Pf4 or Pf6.

We sequenced 27 hyperactive phage isolates and found that they derived from one of two filamentous prophages present in the ancestral strain's genome (Pf4 and Pf6). Most of our phage isolates had large genomic deletions and many shared identical SNPs across populations. (6/10)

Multi-paneled plot providing evidence that hyperactive bacteriophages drove inhibitory filtrate detected in earlier figure.

Follow-up experiments revealed that the cause of inhibitory filtrate was the presence of hyperactive filamentous phage mutants! (5/10)

Multi-paneled plot describing microbial evolution experiment and observations related to the performance of evolved populations in filtrate.

To our surprise, endpoint populations from both density treatments performed much better than the ancestral strain in filtrates. Rather than benefitting evolved populations, filtrate strongly inhibited the ancestral strain, suggesting that an inhibitory factor was at play. (4/10)

We tested this idea using a 1,000-generation evolution experiment where we passaged P. aeruginosa at either high or low population density and then used microplate growth curves to measure the performance of endpoint populations in the filtrate of their ancestors. (3/10)

We set out to test a long standing hypothesis of eco-evolutionary theory: that high population density, by magnifying the impact of organisms of their environment, should strengthen eco-evolutionary feedbacks. (2/10)

Interested in eco-evolutionary feedbacks? Microbial experimental evolution? Pleiotropy? Filamentous phages??

Check out our latest preprint, now up on BioRxiv!

biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

For a quick summary, peep the thread below...🧵 (1/10)

Cathy is one of the most brilliant, supportive, and thoughtful scientists and mentors I’ve had the privilege of working with.

I would recommend working with Cathy to any student interested in bacteria-phage interactions.

Congrats, Cathy!! We will miss you dearly.

The social lives of viruses | Asher Leeks | TEDxNewEngland YouTube video by TEDx Talks

I gave a talk last year at TEDxNewEngland aimed at introducing the idea of viral sociality to a general audience, including implications for evolution & virology. Video now available online below.

#socialviruses #evosky #virosky 🧪

📢 We're seeking a postdoc to work on a project funded by HFSP @hfspo.bsky.social at the intersection of bacterial physiology, ecology and evolution. You can find more details about the project, the position, and how to apply here www.dalbellolab.com/hfsp-project! #bacteria #ecosky #MevoSky #microSky

Functional regimes define soil microbiome response to environmental change - Nature Experimental perturbation of soil pH leads to a generalizable model of the soil microcosm comprising three functional regimes with distinct mechanisms linking environmental change to metabolite dynami...

Published in Nature today! Here, we sought to systematically ask how natural community's metabolism changes with the environment. A simple consumer-resource model can predict N-cycle metabolism (nitrate use) and, more importantly, the mechanism behind its change.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

You got this!! Good luck!

Thank you for the encouragement!!

Excited to get to work!

Excited to get to work on GRS 2027 with @duhitasant.bsky.social!!

Hit me up here or via email if you have any feedback or ideas for the next Micro Pop Biol GRS!

Thanks especially to fearless leaders @reeskassen.bsky.social and Christina Burch, and to @drhhnz.bsky.social and @wcratcliff.bsky.social. It was a great to see the process that led up to an amazing 40th anniversary conference 🎉🍰

Super stoked and honored to be elected as co-chair along with @ksbakes.bsky.social for the Microbial Population Biology 2029 GRC!

And looking forward to a great 2027 meeting in Andover chaired by @drhhnz.bsky.social and @wcratcliff.bsky.social !

#ASMicrobe day 3 vibes

For #ASMicrobe folks - looking forward to a busy phage day on Sunday!

Come check out my poster tomorrow at #ASMicrobe in the E&EB section!

We found that repressor mutations in Pf prophages sparked a coevolutionary dynamic that resulted in loss of twitch motility and susceptibility to virulent pilus-targeting phage.

Would love to chat about all things phage :).