How do animal hosts and their beneficial bacteria form partnerships?
Goodrich-Blair Lab at The University of Tennessee
Research Projects
We are using insect-killing nematodes to explore how animals form partnerships with beneficial bacteria, and how these relationships change and evolve over evolutionary time.
We are using insect-killing nematodes to explore how animals form partnerships with beneficial bacteria, and how these relationships change and evolve over evolutionary time.
Animal hosts with mutualistic symbionts must have mechanisms that specifically allow beneficial bacteria to colonize and persist while excluding others that are non-cooperating or harmful. For only a handful of cases do we understand how host and symbiont recognize one another and promote association at a molecular level, and in even fewer instances do we understand how these associations evolve and change in response to environmental factors. One reason for this dearth is a lack of symbiosis model that are easily reared in the lab, where both partners can be independently genetically manipulated. The goal of my research program is to help fill this gap in knowledge using a newly rediscovered and genetically tractable nematode-bacteria mutualism as a symbiosis model: Steinernema entomopathogenic (insect parasitic) nematodes and their Xenorhabdus mutualistic bacteria.
I have developed genetic tools in the X. griffiniae bacterium including transposon mutagenesis, fluorescent strains, gene deletions, sequencing and comparative analysis of a high-quality genome, and I have contributed to analysis of the S. hermaphroditum genome. I am currently using these tools to characterize the molecular mechanisms of colonization, including the genes involved in this process.
I have developed genetic tools in the X. griffiniae bacterium including transposon mutagenesis, fluorescent strains, gene deletions, sequencing and comparative analysis of a high-quality genome, and I have contributed to analysis of the S. hermaphroditum genome. I am currently using these tools to characterize the molecular mechanisms of colonization, including the genes involved in this process.
Publications
Heppert J.K., Awori M.A., Cao M., Chen G., McLeish, J., Goodrich-Blair H., Analyses of Xenorhabdus griffiniae genomes reveal two distinct sub-species that display intra-species variation due to prophages. BMC Genomics. (2024) PMCID: PMC11566119.
St. Thomas N.M., Myers T.G., Alani O.S., Goodrich-Blair H., Heppert J.K. Green and red fluorescent strains of Xenorhabdus griffiniae HGB2511, the bacterial symbiont of the nematode Steinernema hermaphroditum (India). MicroPubl Biol. (2024) PMID: 38371317.
Alani O.S., Cao M., Goodrich-Blair H., Heppert J.K. Conjugation and transposon mutagenesis of Xenorhabdus griffiniae HGB2511, the bacterial symbiont of the nematode Steinernema hermaphroditum (India). MicroPubl Biol. (2023) PMID: 37179970.
Heppert J.K., Ransone E.M., Grossman A.S., Mauer T.J., Goodrich-Blair H. Nematode models of symbiosis in Nematodes as Biological Models. (2022) Glazer I., Shapiro-Ilan D., and Sternberg P. (ed.), CABI, Wallingford. https://doi.org/10.1079/9781789248814.0005.
Heppert J.K., Awori M.A., Cao M., Chen G., McLeish, J., Goodrich-Blair H., Analyses of Xenorhabdus griffiniae genomes reveal two distinct sub-species that display intra-species variation due to prophages. BMC Genomics. (2024) PMCID: PMC11566119.
St. Thomas N.M., Myers T.G., Alani O.S., Goodrich-Blair H., Heppert J.K. Green and red fluorescent strains of Xenorhabdus griffiniae HGB2511, the bacterial symbiont of the nematode Steinernema hermaphroditum (India). MicroPubl Biol. (2024) PMID: 38371317.
Alani O.S., Cao M., Goodrich-Blair H., Heppert J.K. Conjugation and transposon mutagenesis of Xenorhabdus griffiniae HGB2511, the bacterial symbiont of the nematode Steinernema hermaphroditum (India). MicroPubl Biol. (2023) PMID: 37179970.
Heppert J.K., Ransone E.M., Grossman A.S., Mauer T.J., Goodrich-Blair H. Nematode models of symbiosis in Nematodes as Biological Models. (2022) Glazer I., Shapiro-Ilan D., and Sternberg P. (ed.), CABI, Wallingford. https://doi.org/10.1079/9781789248814.0005.