Week 3: Dueling symbionts

This week we'll be discussing research done by Verde and McCloskey on the symbiosis between an intertidal sea anemone and two kinds of intracellular photosynthetic microbes. The two papers linked here deal with the effects of light and temperature on symbiosis physiology, respectively; we'll talk primarily regarding the 2002 paper on effects of light intensity. If you're curious, they also published a third paper in the series on seasonal variation in the symbiosis. Pretty cool stuff.

Meeting postponed

Scheduling conflict! Tentatively postponed to next Tuesday.

Week 2: Chemosynthetic marine symbioses

This week, we'll be talking about a recent review in Nature Reviews Microbiology by Nicole Dubilier, Claudia Bergin, and Christian Lott, entitled, "Symbiotic diversity in marine animals: the art of harnessing chemosynthesis." Hope you can join us!

First paper: Moran and Degnan 2006

Our first paper discussion will be on Nancy Moran and Patrick Degnan's 2006 Molecular Ecology review on Buchnera and aphids (available here). It gives a pretty decent overview of the system, as well as a good idea of how they're investigating the very-cool metabolic dependencies of the interaction. Oddly, I think it should play well to both the Pierce and Girguis lab crowds.

If you want to get really crazy, check out their 2005 paper in PNAS on the symbiotic phage on the secondary symbiotic bacteria on the aphids, and we can talk about that, too.

See you Tuesday!