The gut microbiota is a complex consortium of microorganisms with the ability to influence
important aspects of host health and development. Harnessing this “microbial organ” for …

Vast communities of microorganisms inhabit the gastrointestinal tracts of humans and other
animals. Understanding their initial development, fluctuations in composition, stability over …

Some of the densest microbial ecosystems in nature thrive within the intestines of humans
and other animals. To protect mucosal tissues and maintain immune tolerance, animal hosts …

Correlating the presence of bacteria and the genes they carry with aspects of plant and
animal biology is rapidly outpacing the functional characterization of naturally occurring …

Antibiotics induce large and highly variable changes in the intestinal microbiome even at
sublethal concentrations, through mechanisms that remain elusive. Using gnotobiotic zebrafish…

Are there general biophysical relationships governing the spatial organization of the gut
microbiome? Despite growing realization that spatial structure is important for population stability…

… Schlomann and Parthasarathy used this data to build a mathematical model that can
predict the size of the clusters formed by different gut bacteria. This revealed that the spatial …

A central problem in population ecology is understanding the consequences of stochastic
fluctuations. Analytically tractable models with Gaussian driving noise have led to important, …

Although animals encounter a plethora of bacterial species throughout their lives, only a
subset colonize vertebrate digestive tracts, and these bacteria can profoundly influence the …

The capacity to associate symbiotic bacteria with vital aspects of plant and animal biology is
outpacing our understanding of the mechanisms shaping these interactions. A major barrier …