I am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026! The Microbial Ecosystems Lab @hot-mes-asu.bsky.social at ASU studies microbial interactions, spatial ecology, and imaging-driven microbiome science. If you love microbes, microfluidics, or single-cell analysis, let’s talk! www.microbialeco.systems

Our Vibrios were the last ones to make the intercontinental move and are excited to be in their new surroundings!

This story started when we put two Vibrio species commonly found in the coastal oceans under the microscope. V. anguillarum cannot grow on alginate, an algal polysaccharide, but V. cyclitrophicus can. So how does the former species grow? The answer: By killing the ones that can

#Microsky #T6SS

We found this behaviour in multiple vibrios: ordalii and even v cholerae! The cool thing about cholerae, we can observe killing (blue foci firing up) in action!

but when T6SS killers were present with prey on a carbon source that only prey could utilise, the killers waited for prey cells to grow and ultimately shot toxins into prey, thereby leaking nutrients from prey cells. The killers than acquired these nutrients and resumed their growth

For me an amazing aspect of this discovery was going back to the roots of microbiology: observing cells under the microscope. When T6SS killers were present along with prey on a carbon source that both types can metabolise- the killers wiped out prey cells