Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊
Assist Prof of Earth Sciences at SMU
Microbial ecologist 🔬🦠
English bulldog enthusiast 🐶🐾
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊Uneven sequencing (coverage) depth can bias microbial intraspecies diversity estimates and how to account for it academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a... #jcampubs
- 🌊🌊🌊 Our PNAS paper on octocoral diterpene evolution is out - a huge interdisciplinary effort led by @immo-burkhardt.bsky.social and the first publication from our @noaa.gov grant on the biopharmaceutical potential of the CCE🪸🤿🧬 www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
- 🧫 Graduate students wanted - microbial edition The Chase Lab at SMU Earth Sciences is looking for microbial humans: adaptive, collaborative, and occasionally anaerobic. If you get excited about connecting sequence data to actual biology, come join the experiment. 🌍 Dallas, TX 🔗 microbomics.com
- We study how microbial lineages evolve and assemble linking genomes, metabolites, and ecological roles. Fieldwork, mass specs, metagenomes, and a bit of chaos. 🧬 PhDs are fully funded (tuition, stipend, the works). Additional competitive fellowships are available through SMU’s grad school.
- Details and application info: 🔗 smu.edu/dedman/academics/departments/earth-sciences/graduate Funding + microbes = happiness. DM or email if you’re ready to dive in.
- Started off as a reading group and led to a nice mini-review of microbiome evolution in natural communities. Complete credit to Abby for leading this fun collab! #mevosky Investigating bacterial evolution in nature with metagenomics doi.org/10.1016/j.mi...
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊Our article showing energy production from air alone is in PNAS today. This paper provides an ultimate biochemical proof that microbes can survive simply by 'making' energy from air (making two ATP per molecule atmospheric H2 consumed) and has biotech applications. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊Fungal spores reveal a global climate footprint on microbes' traits! Incorporating microbial traits improves predictions of biogeographic shifts. Fun project w @balachaudhary.bsky.social @smriti-pehim-limbu.bsky.social @sturmer.bsky.social @aguilart.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- New work led by the amazing @aprillukowski.bsky.social lab. Love working on these interdisciplinary projects discovering new chemical diversity in nature. Microbes are the best chemists! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
- En route to ASM Microbe. Excited to be back in CA. Let me know if you’re also going and want to grab a coffee to discuss some science 🙌🏻
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊There is so, so much good science being shared and discussed on bsky right now. The news of its demise is quite backwards. If you are having trouble finding it among all of the very important political news, use the papersky feed that filters posts you follow to just papers: bsky.app/profile/pape...
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊Unearthing Vertical Stratified Archaeal Community and Associated Methane Metabolism in Thermokarst Sediments enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #jcampubs
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊Just out in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... "The evolution of thermal performance curves in response to rising temperatures across the model genus yeast". Beautiful work using experimental evolution forecasting climate impacts on biodiversity by Jennifer Molinet @jennifermolinet.bsky.social
- When is microbial cross-feeding evolutionarily stable? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- so is it like even worth starting to prepare a CAREER grant??? 🤷♂️
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊New opinion paper from the lab! www.cell.com/trends/micro...
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊I am very happy (and anxious) to share with you our most recent work in which we evaluated four of the most popular long-read assemblers, www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... and tell you just a little bit about it in the following 🧵
- Love this title! My ecology class reads the original Hutchinson paper to start the semester every year. #niches Paradox of the Sub-Plankton: Plausible Mechanisms andOpen Problems Underlying Strain-Level Diversity inMicrobial Communities doi.org/10.1111/1462...
- If you're in DFW next week, come join us for our 3rd Annual SMU Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources (EENR) Colloquium. Exciting invited speakers and panels addressing science, industry, and law about pressing #envsci issues 📍 SMU 📅 Friday May 2 🌎🌱🛰️🍃♻️💡
- If anyone is teaching environmental science #Envsci I highly recommend showing students this interactive world map of the ocean-atmosphere interactions 🌎 🌊 🌬️ classic.nullschool.net
- really cool paper on RiPPs that binds to a new ribosomal site, inhibits translation elongation and induces miscoding in G+ and G- www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- and another recent one giving some ecological context to RiPPs in the human gut: five AIPs effectively inhibit the biofilm formation of disease-associated pathogens www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- “species composition and functional properties of tropical American forests (and possibly all tropical forests) are increasingly out of equilibrium with local climate” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊🚨New paper from NSF EMERGE BII: A framework for integrating genomics, microbial traits, and ecosystem biogeochemistry. Read here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- #mevosky Last semester: reading group on micro evolution - trying to understand in natural communities. Wanted to share! 🧬🦠 1. Start with THE classic paper on MAGs Community structure and metabolism through reconstruction of microbial genomes from the environment www.nature.com/articles/nat...
- 2. We revisited one of the first papers to measures in situ evolutionary rates (still one of the best systems to do so!) In Situ Evolutionary Rate Measurements Show Ecological Success of Recently Emerged Bacterial Hybrids www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- 3. Moved to newer literature on characterizing these mechanisms due to environmental stressors Parallel ecological and evolutionary responses to selection in a natural bacterial community www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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View full threadFeel free to share your favorites! Always need new papers to read and discuss, especially anything microbial evolution related
- Need a reading group or something to catch-up on some amazing papers!! A vast repertoire of secondary metabolites potentially influences community dynamics and biogeochemical processes in cold seeps | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/full/10....
- Some of my first year grad students in my class are asking for books to read that will get them thinking about what questions to ask and how to know what they should ask. I have a couple of recs but wondering if anyone can help. What inspired you??
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊Our minireview on BGC evolution being shaped by genomic & ecological context is now live on mSystems: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... #secmet #MEvoSky
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊I think the Microbial Evolution feed is working! Simply add the #MEvoSky hashtag to your post and it will aggregate to the feed linked below. Feel free to introduce yourself in context of microbial evo and adjacent topics. Experimental and directed evo welcome too! bsky.app/profile/did:...
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊This is worth a read for anybody interested in microbial diversity www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊Adam Rivers (USDA-ARS) and I are hiring a joint postdoc to on a microfluidics and sequencing based project to better understand synthetic and natural microbiome community dynamics and generate data to build AI/ML models to infer interspp. interactions. Hit me up if interested!
- First ever #AGU24 was a massive success. Loved hearing about all the soil talks and POM v MAOM mechanisms, both geochemical and microbial mediated. Definitely has me thinking a lot more about soil dynamics.
- Reposted by Alex Chase 🧬🌋🌊📣 All our sessions about advancing soil carbon predictions is today!
- I’m at #AGU24 all week! 📋Come to my poster on Wed morning to chat about integrating microbial diversity and adaptation into ecosystem models. 🗣️Come to our 2 oral sessions Wed afternoon to talk about improving soil carbon predictions. ☕️And message me to chat over coffee!
