Alison Gould
Temple University, PA·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Animals depend on beneficial bacteria for health and survival, yet little is known about how a host picks the right microbial partners out of the crowded microbial world around it. The puzzle is hardest at the finest scale, where a host must tell apart closely related species or even genetically distinct strains of one species.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Ecology & Evolution
Genetics
- Topics
symbiosis
host-microbe interactions
host specificity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Test whether co-occurring Siphamia fish species associate with distinct strains of the glowing bacterium Photobacterium mandapamensis, using comparative genomics of bacterial strains isolated from each host.
- Test whether fish preferentially take up native over non-native bacterial strains, using controlled colonization and competition assays with fluorescently labeled strains.
- Identify host genes that govern partner recognition during symbiont acquisition, using single-nucleus RNA sequencing to build a cell-type-resolved atlas of the fish light organ association.
More about the research
This project asks how animals recognize and recruit specific bacterial symbionts while rejecting near look-alikes.
Why it matters
Understanding how animals select beneficial bacteria and reject closely related incompatible strains could inform how vertebrate gut microbiomes are established. The grant notes that this knowledge could guide engineering of microbial symbionts for therapeutic uses, the design of probiotics, and the building of synthetic host-microbe systems in biotechnology.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Adam Reitzel
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC·Ecology & Evolution
Measure the extent of copy number variation in key immune genes across Nematostella vectensis populations using comparative genomics and transcriptomics.
Liana Burghardt
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Identify which legume host traits support which rhizobial bacteria by analyzing plant characteristics and field samples from legumes, using traditional and AI-enabled image and statistical analysis.
Santiago Cuesta
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Neuroscience·Early-career
Identify how psychostimulant exposure changes gut microbial composition and the gut's chemical environment, using metagenomics to profile microbial DNA and metabolomics to measure small molecules.
The school
Temple University: 22 labs on PI Pages, $315M a year on research, 238 research doctorates a year.
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