Visiting Student October 2009 – June 2010
(hosted by Cecilia Wentrup)

I am a visiting Fulbright scholar researching under the guidance of Dr. Nicole Dubilier and Ph. D student Cecilia Wentrup. I am currently investigating the symbiont transmission in deep-sea Bathymodiolin mussels.

It is known that the bacterial symbionts are acquired from the environment, but this process is poorly understood. I use fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to determine the location of the symbionts in the gills of juvenile mussels and immunohistochemistry to test for the presence of certain cellular processes involved in symbiont transmission.

Previously, I worked in the laboratory of Dr. Sarkis Mazmanian as an undergraduate at Caltech, studying the mechanism by which B. fragilis colonizes the mammalian gut.

I will begin my graduate studies at Stanford University in the fall 2010, where I plan to study host-microbe interactions of bacterial symbionts in the mammalian gut.

Yannick Colin

Visiting Student, August - September 2009
(hosted by Dennis Fink)

Yannick was a Master student from the University of Brest with experience on viruses infecting marine hyperthermophilic euryarchaeota at deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

He worked in our group on bacterial settlement devices which had been deployed at hydrothermal vents at the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Via the full cycle 16S rRNA approach he discovered free-living relatives of the symbiotic bacteria that live with the local fauna of Bathymodiolus mussels.