Josh Kirsch is our August highlighted student! Josh is a 5th year in the Duerkop Lab and his research is on how transposable elements diversify bacterial genomes. Check out his entire highlight on the program website here: cuanschutz.edu/graduate-progr…

If you are on the job market and interested in the host response to pathogens, CU Anschutz Dept of Immunology & Microbiology is hiring an Assistant Professor. Come join a vibrant and diverse department in the heart of the Mountain West cu.taleo.net/careersection/…

Amazing dinner with the most wonderful people, celebrating -or-scheming against, the coolest bug 😎, enterococcus. Thank you Michael Gilmore for your generosity and support of the field!! Horswill Lab Joe Zackular Doran Lab Daria Van Tyne, Howard Hang, and so many others!!

Ready for our 2023 wrapped?

Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science! February 11!🔬🧪🧫 #WomenInScience #WomenAndGirlsInScience #WomenInScienceDay #microscopy

Emma Sheriff, PhD and Shelby E. Andersen from Duerkop Lab recently published a genome announcement for a new phage isolated from water from the Ganges River! Read the entire manuscript here: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38294211/ ASM #MRAJournal

In a new study lead by Josh Kirsch and in collaboration with Andrew Hryckowian, we provide a comprehensive IS database for use with polymicrobial MAGs. We show that IS insertions target accessory genes within the microbiota that support gut adaptation. cell.com/cell-host-micr…

Had a great time at the Rocky Mountain Branch - ASM meeting this weekend. So honored to receive an award for my talk, and very proud of my labmates (Shelby E. Andersen and Garima Arya) who also received awards for their presentations - Go Duerkop Lab!

Featured Article: Insertion sequence-driven evolution of microbiota. Duerkop Lab Andrew Hryckowian & Kirsch develop pipeline that reveals abundance & dynamics of IS insertions in human intestinal #microbiota & their roles in genome diversification & adaptation cell.com/cell-host-micr…

Come for the proteomics, stay for the changes in plaque morphology!

A picture is worth 1536 plaque assays. While we used a robot, we also tried a dirt-cheap 3D-printed alternative which works wonders at 384-density. I really believe this pre-print has the potentially to be the largest impact I will make on my field. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

So happy to announce that I successfully defended my thesis today!! Thank you to all the people (CU Anschutz Medical Campus CU Anschutz Graduate Program in Microbiology Duerkop Lab) who helped me along the way, and I can't wait to start my postdoc soon University of Helsinki with Ville-Petri Friman 🇪🇺🇫🇮🇬🇧🇪🇺 !

A huge congrats to Emma Sheriff, PhD on her successful PhD thesis defense today! There are exciting times for Emma ahead, moving to Helsinki and joining Ville-Petri Friman 🇪🇺🇫🇮🇬🇧🇪🇺 for her postdoc. We will miss you dearly and can’t wait to see what comes next for you in your scientific career!!

Round two this week for Duerkop Lab thesis defenses. A big congratulations to the newly minted Dr. Josh Kirsch! Josh made important discoveries in IS element biology during his time in the lab and has become a phenomenal bioinformatician. Job well done Josh! 🎉🍾🎉🍾

Check out this open postdoc position in the Keestra-Gounder lab here at CU Anschutz Dept of Immunology & Microbiology They are doing some exciting work at the interface of virology and innate immunity in the gut. Think about applying and joining us in beautiful Colorado. cu.taleo.net/careersection/…

The U.S. News & World Report has ranked the CU School of Medicine as a top-tier research institution in the U.S. Only 16 medical schools are included in this top tier. Learn more about the ranking here: bit.ly/3WK8Y8p

So glad to see this work finally published - check it out!

Thrilled to share a new paper from Cydney Johnson, PhD and Nathan Bullen identifying a phage protein that inhibits TIV-REs from diverse bacterial phyla. Collab w/ John Whitney. Shout out to Shelby E. Andersen Garima Arya and Peter Weigele’s group New England Biolabs nature.com/articles/s4146…

“Friends Don't Let Friends Make Bad Graphs” OMG data visualization nerds, you must read this. Only you will appreciate the humor, and there’s a fair amount. Clever and informative. Kudos to author: Chenxin Li, PhD (@chenxinli2.bsky.social); thanks Brandon Chen (he/him) for the lead! github.com/cxli233/Friend…

🦠 Phages are promising #antimicrobials against resistant bacteria. Emma Sheriff, PhD et al. show how a quorum-sensing protease alters phage infection in E. faecalis, impacting #biofilm and virulence. Could this be leveraged for #phagetherapy? 🧬 #FEMSMicrobes academic.oup.com/femsmicrobes/a…