Journal Announcements: August 2015
ASM ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENTS OF SENIOR EDITORS FOR mSphere™ and mSystems™
The launch of ASM's two new interdisciplinary open-access journals, mSphere and mSystems, is scheduled for early 2016. mSphere is a pan-microbiology journal that will publish high-quality research by scientists whose work falls outside the scopes of traditional ASM specialty journals. mSystems is a systems microbiology journal that will publish cutting-edge, significant advances in research associated with metabolic and regulatory systems on the scale of both a single cell and entire microbial communities. Both journals will provide streamlined decisions along with short publication times, to ensure important findings are available to the scientific community as quickly as possible.
Formal Calls for Papers are scheduled for September 2015. Visit msphere.asm.org and msystems.asm.org for more information.
ASM is pleased to announce the appointment of Senior Editors for mSphere and mSystems effective July 1, 2015.
Editor in Chief MICHAEL IMPERIALE appoints mSphere™ Senior Editors:
IRA BLADER, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at SUNY Buffalo's Department of Microbiology and Immunology. His research team is focused on identifying how transcription factors function and how the parasite adapts to the various oxygen environments it encounters during its lifecycle. Additionally, the team is exploring our understanding of how Toxoplasma causes ocular disease by developing a murine ocular toxoplasmosis model to identify parasite virulence factors and to study immune responses in the eye. Dr. Blader previously served as an Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center. He is currently a panel member of the NIH Pathogenic Eukaryotes Study Section.
MELANIE BLOKESCH, Ph.D., is the head of the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Her research primarily focuses on how bacteria evolve in natural environments to emerge as human pathogens and how horizontal gene transfer contributes to pathogen emergence. The model organism for these studies is the causative agent of cholera, Vibrio cholerae. Recent work by the Blokesch group deciphered new aspects of the regulatory network that governs natural competence for transformation, which is a widespread mode of horizontal gene transfer in bacteria. Moreover, cellular microbiology-based approaches used by her group provided important new insights into the mechanistic aspects of the DNA uptake process and the link between interbacterial competition (mediated via the type VI secretion system) and DNA transfer in V. cholerae. Dr. Blokesch holds a Ph.D. degree from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. From 2005 to 2009 she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology of Stanford University (USA). In 2009, she was appointed as tenure-track assistant professor within the School of Life Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.
PATRICIA BRADFORD, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Infectious Disease Research at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, where she also serves as the Head of Development Microbiology. In her current position, Dr. Bradford supports the Phase 3 and registration efforts for late stage β-lactam products. Previously, she led biology efforts on discovery platforms for antibiotics and antivirals as the company's Head of Biology. As the Director of Infectious Disease at Novartis, Dr. Bradford managed a diverse group of scientists with specialties in clinical microbiology, in vivo pharmacology, biochemistry and bioinformatics.
CAROLYN COYNE, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics. She is also the principal investigator at the Coyne Lab, which focuses on (1) the mechanisms by which enteroviruses have evolved to successfully circumnavigate the barriers presented by polarized cells to facilitate virus entry, replication, and spread, (2) on the mechanisms utilized by enteroviruses to evade and/or suppress innate immune signaling, (3) on the identification of novel regulators and components of the innate immune system, and (4) on the role of placental-specific microRNAs in antiviral signaling and the induction of autophagy at the maternal-fetal interface. Dr. Coyne is a member of Faculty of 1000 (Virology), serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Virology® and Virology, and as is an associate editor of PLOS Pathogens.
SARAH D'ORAZIO, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Dr. D'Orazio's dissertation work at the University of Miami School of Medicine focused on Bacterial Pathogenesis, and she did a postdoctoral fellowship in Immunology at Harvard Medical School. Research in her lab focuses on understanding the complex interplay between the virulence strategies of the bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes and the immune defense mechanisms of the host. Her lab uses a mouse model of foodborne infection to study how the balance of these factors results in a wide spectrum of human disease, ranging from mild, self-limiting gastroenteritis to life-threatening systemic infections that can invade both the brain and the placenta. Dr. D'Orazio received her Ph.D. in Microbiology & Immunology from the University of Miami School of Medicine.
PAUL DUPREX, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Microbiology at Boston University's School of Medicine. He is also the Director of Cell and Tissue Imaging at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) Institute in Boston. His research involves understanding the molecular basis of pathogenesis and attenuation of respiratory paramyxoviruses, with the aim of developing rationally attenuated vaccines for these viruses. Dr. Duprex serves as an editor for FEMS Microbiological Reviews, Journal of General Virology, and PLOS Pathogens. He received his Ph.D. from The Queen's University of Belfast.
KATHERINE McMAHON, Ph.D., is a Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the Departments of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Bacteriology. Dr. McMahon's lab studies the microbial ecology of both natural and engineered systems using molecular tools to investigate microbial community structure and function in lakes and activated sludge. Her team uses molecular tools to investigate microbial community composition, dynamics, and function, while integrating principles of ecology and engineering to explain observed patterns. Dr. McMahon received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
AARON MITCHELL, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on Candida albicans, with the objective of defining the determinants of pathogenicity and drug responses in order to identify strategies to improve diagnosis and therapeutics. Dr. Mitchell's work has two goals: (1) is to define the regulatory pathways and signals that promote biofilm formation, and to understand the steps in biofilm development that they control, and (2) to determine how regulatory pathways are rewired during infection, and what the ultimate outputs may be that permit growth in the infection environment. Dr. Mitchell has served as Editor in Chief of Eukaryotic Cell® since 2010. He is also an associate editor for PLOS Pathogens, a section editor for PLOS Pathogens, and is a member of Faculty of 1000 (Medical Microbiology). He received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
SUSANNAH TRINGE, Ph.D., is head of the Metagenome Program at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, where she oversees research using DNA sequence data to study communities of microbes from diverse environmental niches. Her major research interests relate to microbial influences on greenhouse gas uptake and release in wetlands and how microbes interact with plants to affect growth, health and disease resistance. Dr. Tringe received her undergraduate degree in Physics from Harvard University then went on to a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Stanford University. From there she spent a few years in a yeast genetics lab at the University of New Mexico before joining Dr. Edward Rubin's group at Berkeley Lab as a postdoc in 2003. There she developed techniques for using DNA sequence data for comparative analysis of whole microbial communities, rather than individual organisms, a field now known as metagenomics. In 2011 she was awarded an Early Career Research grant from the Department of Energy to study microbial communities in wetlands and the potential for wetland restoration to serve as an effective carbon sink.
Editor in Chief JACK GILBERT appoints mSystems™ Senior Editors:
ILEANA CRISTEA, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Dr. Cristea performed her graduate research at the Michael Barber Center for Mass Spectrometry, University of Manchester, U.K., under the supervision of Simon Gaskell, and at the Toxicology Research & Development Department at GlaxoSmithKline, U.K. She pursued her postdoctoral work in the mass spectrometry laboratory of Brian Chait at The Rockefeller University. The research of her group is at the interface between proteomics and virology. Her goal is to build an understanding of viral infection from a proteomics perspective. Broad questions that her lab is addressing are: How do viruses effectively modulate cellular pathways? How do hosts respond to viral infection? Can proteomics identify key host proteins to harness for therapeutic development? To accomplish these goals, her laboratory utilizes a multi-disciplinary approach that integrates proteomics techniques with genomics, microscopy, bioinformatics, and virology. These approaches have allowed her group to bridge developments in mass spectrometry to critical findings in biology, identifying mechanisms used by viruses to manipulate their hosts, as well as defenses hosts deploy to protect themselves from viral attack.
PIETER DORRESTEIN, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Departments of Pharmacology, Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. He also heads the Dorrestein laboratory, which aims to develop new mass spectrometry approaches to detect and characterize therapeutic leads as well as their biosynthesis. The research in his lab falls into 4 areas: (1) The functional characterization of novel post-translational modifications involved in the biosynthesis of therapeutics or therapeutic targets. (2) Develop new methods to characterize metabolic exchange factors from microbial systems involved in cell-to-cell communication. All cells communicate with other cells. Currently, there are no tools to systematically study the molecular output of a small population of cells. My lab is developing mass spectrometry based approaches to study the universal phenomenon of cell-to-cell communication to discover new biological modulators. (3) Therapeutic target identification, including off-targets. Target identification is very important to the therapeutic discovery pipeline. This is done in collaboration with other scientists at UCSD, UCSC, SALK, SIO and elsewhere. (4) Monitoring the global response of therapeutics by monitoring the signaling proteome. While a therapeutic may have one or a few targets, the entire proteome of a cell or tissue will be affected. The phosphoproteome provides insight into the effect therapeutics have on cells or tissues and is monitored upon therapeutic stimulation providing insights into key regulatory pathways. Dr. Dorrestein received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
JONATHAN EISEN, Ph.D., is a Professor at the University of California, Davis with appointments in the School of Medicine and the College of Biological Sciences. His research focuses on communities of microbes and how they provide new functions — to each other or to a host. His study systems have included boiling acid pools, surface ocean waters, agents of many diseases, and the microbial ecosystems in and on plants and animals. He is also coordinating the largest microbial sequencing project to date — a Genomic Encyclopedia — being done at the DOE Joint Genome Institute where he holds an Adjunct Appointment. His overarching goal in his research is to create a “Field Guide to the Microbes”. Prior to UC Davis, he was on the faculty of The Institute for Genomic Research and held an Adjunct Appointment at the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Eisen is the Academic Editor in Chief of PLOS Biology. Dr. Eisen received his Ph.D. from Stanford University.
JULIE HUBER, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University and the Associate Director of the Marine Biological Laboratory's Josephine Bay Paul Center. She is a microbial oceanographer by training and is broadly interested in microbial ecology and understanding how microbial communities establish, function, and evolve in diverse ecosystems. Her research program investigates deep-sea microbial ecosystems with an emphasis on using crustal fluids to interrogate the rocky subseafloor habitat. Dr. Huber is funded by a variety of agencies, including the NSF, NASA, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Deep Carbon Observatory. In 2007, she received the L'Oréal USA Fellowship for Women in Science. Dr. Huber received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
JANET JANSSON, Ph.D., is the Division Director of Biological Sciences at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). She obtained her Ph.D. in 1988 at Michigan State University and then established a successful research career in Sweden over the next 20 years. From 2000 to 2006, she was the Professor and Chair of Environmental Microbiology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Vice Dean of the Natural Sciences Faculty, where she coordinated the Swedish strategic national center of excellence, the Uppsala Microbiomics Center. From 2007 to 2013, she was a senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and from 2012 to 2014 an Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley and the University of Copenhagen. She was recruited to PNNL in June 2014, and she currently also serves as the President of the International Society for Microbiology (ISME) and as a senior editor of the ISME Journal. Jansson has more than 30 years' experience in microbial ecology, with specific expertise in the use of molecular approaches (omics) to study complex microbial communities, such as those residing in soil, sediments, and the human gut. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, has more than 110 publications, and is the editor of two books on molecular microbial ecology and one textbook on soil microbiology.
ROB KNIGHT, Ph.D., is a Professor at the University of California San Diego's Departments of Pediatrics and Computer Science & Engineering. He completed a B.Sc. in Biochemistry in his native New Zealand at the University of Otago, then completed a Ph.D. on the origin and evolution of the genetic code with Laura Landweber in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He conducted postdoctoral research with Mike Yarus on RNA sequence space in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado, and then was the first hire in the interdisciplinary BioFrontiers Institute (then CIMB) at the University of Colorado in 2004. Much of Dr. Knight's research focuses on the microbiome. He has participated in discoveries including linking gut microbes to obesity, to diet, to geography, to age and to host behavior; the individualized nature of our microbes, which even link us to objects we touch; the role of pH rather than plant community or biome in structuring soil microbial communities globally; and the deep microbial “seed bank” that occurs in marine and perhaps other ecosystems. In 2009 he became an HHMI Early Career Scientist, and in 2012 he became an AAAS Fellow.
MARGARET MCFALL-NGAI, Ph.D., is currently Director of the Pacific Biosciences Research Center (PBRC) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a Professor at PBRC's Kewalo Marine Laboratory. Her laboratory studies the role of beneficial bacteria in health using the squid-vibrio model and the biochemical and molecular “design” of tissues that interact with light. In addition, she has been heavily involved in promoting microbiology as the cornerstone of the field of biology. Dr. McFall-Ngai also currently holds emeritus status at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the positions of Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University and EU Marie Curie ITN Professor. She was recently (2011 to 2013) a Moore Scholar at the California Institute of Technology. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology (2002), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011), and the National Academy of Sciences (2014).
KATHERINE POLLARD, Ph.D., is a Senior Investigator at the Gladstone Institutes. She is the founder and faculty supervisor of the Gladstone Bioinformatics Core and a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute for Human Genetics, and Institute for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Her lab develops statistical and computational methods for the analysis of massive genomic data sets. Her current projects focus on two major areas of genome evolution: identifying the genetic basis for human-specific traits, such as our susceptibility to AIDS and atherosclerosis, and characterizing the human microbiome through metagenomic data. She was previously an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis Genome Center and Department of Statistics. She was awarded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship in 1995 and the Sloan Research Fellowship in 2008. She is also a member of the California Academy of Sciences. Dr. Pollard earned her master's degree and Ph.D. in biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley, where she developed computationally intensive statistical methods for the analysis of microarray data with applications in cancer biology. She implemented these approaches in Bioconductor, an open source software program used with high-throughput genomic data. As a comparative genomics postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she participated in the Chimpanzee Genome Project and used this sequence to identify the fastest-evolving regions in the human genome, known as human accelerated regions.
JEROEN RAES, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at KU Leuven. After his masters in Biochemistry and masters in Bioinformatics, Dr. Raes received his Ph.D. in bioinformatics and comparative genomics in the lab of Pierre Rouze and Yves Van de Peer from the University of Ghent. His focus was on the role of gene and genome duplication in evolution and the birth of novel gene functions. After an IWT postdoc with CropDesign on the identification of novel yield target genes, he moved to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, for a postdoc in the lab of Peer Bork on computational analysis of environmental sequence data (metagenomics), where he was later promoted to scientist, focusing on the integration of heterogeneous environmental ‘omics’ data. The Raes lab combines large-scale, next-generation sequencing with novel computational approaches to investigate the functioning and variability of the healthy human microbiome at the systems level and study its alteration in disease.
LIPING ZHAO, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Microbiology at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His team has been applying molecular and genomic tools for systems understanding and predictive manipulation of the complex microbial communities in human and animal guts. Liping has contributed significantly to the understanding of the role of the interactions between nutrition and gut microbiota in obesity and related metabolic diseases. As the first example of using the logic of Koch's postulates as a conceptual framework for demonstrating the causative role of specific members of the gut microbiota in obesity, he showed that one endotoxin-producing opportunistic pathogen isolated from an obese human gut causes obesity in germfree mice. He shows that traditional Chinese medicine and medicinal foods can help control obesity/diabetes with gut microbiota as a drug target, opening new avenues for managing the devastating epidemic of metabolic diseases. Science magazine has featured a story on how he combines traditional Chinese medicine and gut microbiota study to understand and fight obesity (Hvistendahl M. 2012. Science 336:1248–1250). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
EUKARYOTIC CELL® TO MERGE INTO NEW OPEN-ACCESS JOURNAL, mSphere™
To leverage the broader reach of mSphere, Eukaryotic Cell® (EC) will join the new journal at launch. EC Editor in Chief Aaron Mitchell will serve as a Senior Editor of mSphere. Eight of the current EC editors also will join the new journal to handle peer review of research on eukaryotic microbes. The launch of mSphere will offer the EC community a tremendous opportunity to expand the impact of their research. Dr. Mitchell and mSphere Editor in Chief Michael Imperiale will work together closely to ensure the needs of the EC community continue to be addressed at the new journal. ASM encourages EC authors to submit their research to mSphere.