Bordenstein Lab Online and Social Media Resources

         Wolbachia (1-5), Nasonia (6-7), & Lab Sites (8-16)

1. Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project, Discovery-based project on Wolbachia symbiosis for precollege and college science education; includes labs, videos, and lectures, and other resources
2. Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project Facebook Page, Social media outlet updated weekly (and sometimes daily) to disseminate outreach activities, new Wolbachia papers or news stories, history facts, and conferences 
3. Wolbachia pipientis, An Exemplar Species Page for the Encyclopedia of Life
4. Wolbachia, A Heritable Pandemic, Online resources to informational websites, news releases, primary literature, WebQuest, and educational modules 
5. Bioinformatics, Online educational modules for undergraduate and high school students, Microbial Life Educational Resources
6. Nasonia Facebook Page, Social media outlet to disseminate Nasonia papers, news stories, history facts, and conferences. Nasonia is a genus of parasitoid wasps that is frequently used in high schools, university labs, and biocontrol companies. 
7. Nasonia Posterous Page, listserv and blog for Nasonia researchers and educators to email each  other on new tools to the community, collaborative projects, conferences, and more..
8. Blog, Symbionticism – A blog about symbiosis, science, and science education. 
9. YouTube One Channel - videos and video blogs by Seth on research and science education
10. Vimeo - videos on research and science education
11. Insect Innate Immunity Database, an online database and annotation tool of insect immunity genes
12. Bordenstein lab website, Description of the lab’s research, education, pics, and links to pubs
13. Twitter, @Symbionticism, Microblogging news stories about symbiosis, genomics, science, education, new Wolbachia papers, and conferences 
14. Lab Twitter Feeds: @liveinsymbiosis (Robert Brucker, Postdoc), @dnadiva87 (Lisa Funkhouser, Ph.D. student), @JMetcalfVU (Jason Metcalf, M.D./Ph.D. student),  @lifelovescience (Kristin Jernigan, postdoc), @skotomorph, (Joey Simmons, Research Assistant), @lepage_d (Daniel LePage, Ph.D. student)
15. Lab Blogs: Live In Symbiosis (Robert Brucker, Ph.D.)
16. Hologenome Facebook Page, Community venue to track the history and future of innate interactions between the microbiome and animal genome. 

My talk at the International Symbiosis Society Congress 2012

The International Symbiosis Society is now meeting in Krakow, Poland. About 300 participants have gathered to discuss their latest research, meet colleagues, and form new collaborations. Here is my talk from yesterday's session on Horizontal Gene Transfer and the Role of Viruses:

The Entangled Bank in Animals: Viral Transfer Between Bacterial Symbionts

Note 1: the recording starts on the second slide of the talk
Note 2: Related blog post at http://symbionticism.blogspot.com/2012/06/universality-and-complexity-of-viruses.html

In this talk at the International Symbiosis Society Meeting in Krakow, Poland, 2012, I discuss the transfer of genes between bacterial coinfections in animal hosts. Animal species are a conglomerate of their own cells, viruses, and bacterial symbiont cells. Indeed, the genes in the symbiont population can vastly outnumber the genes of the host, and yet we know little about the frequency at which these symbiont genes are swapped between coinfecting microbes or co-opted by the animal host. Here, I demonstrate that even in the most restrictive class of symbionts, the obligate intracellular bacteria, there is a surprising amount of genetic flux between coinfections. I discuss three primary findings. First, the most common obligate intracellular bacteria on the planet, Wolbachia pipientis, exemplifies extraordinary rates of bacteriophage transfer that are akin to the levels of genetic flux seen in free-living bacteria. Second, genome sequencing demonstrates that whole bacteriophage genomes can transfer apparently unrestrained between related and unrelated intracellular bacteria that coinfect the same host. Third, a new tool is presenteed that rapidly isolates genomes of microbes in a mixture of genomes from various organisms and environments. I conclude that animals are frequently ecological arenas for gene transfer between intracellular bacteria - thereby providing a means by which new genes and functions can be acquired in symbionts and inherited in their animal hosts.


Hat tip to Rob (@liveinsymbiosis) for recoding the video.