Brendan Bohannan
Department of Biology | University of Oregon
Eugene, OR, UNITED STATES
Microbiology expert, focusing on microbes, from how they affect (or are affected by) climate change, to how they affect our health
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Biography
Brendan Bohannan is an expert in microbes from the perspective of influences related to climate change and their effect on human health. He looks at what happens when microbes that are meant to live outside are brought into indoor locations, like classrooms, hospitals and schools through the air or by users of indoor spaces. He is professor of biology and environmental studies and an affiliate of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution. A Google Science Communication Fellow, he also is involved in multi-institutional efforts in South America and Africa to study soil microbes (bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc.) and how they fit into global warming as causes or consequences.
Areas of Expertise (4)
Climate Change
Microbiology
Health
Sustainability
Links (3)
Media Appearances (3)
UO has role in new national initiative on children's health
Around the O
2016-09-22
As part of the UO's later plan in the initiative, researchers from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution, led by Brendan Bohannan, will gather dust from participants' homes to search for microbial impacts on health. DNA samples collected from children in the study also will be analyzed to look for genetic associations with health outcomes. The information gathered, she said, will help address several important questions. "Is there something in the food or exercise environment that predisposes kids to some conditions, like obesity? Or is it genetics that are shared among family members that contribute to the resemblances within family members? By studying children who are adopted as well as children raised by their biological parents, we can separate the influences of shared genes from aspects of the child’s rearing environment,” she said...
UO is co-leader in Amazon study of methane-related microbes
Around the O online
2015-12-10
Co-leading the new five-year project, which launches in January, is Brendan Bohannan, professor in the Department of Biology and member of the UO Institute of Ecology and Evolution. The UO will provide genome-sequencing tools available in the UO Genomics Core Facility and employ computer-modeling capabilities of the UO's cloud computing center ACISS (Applied Computational Instrument for Scientific Synthesis)...
Thousands of unexpected microbes break down our bodies after death
Science
2015-12-10
“I imagine that [the new] conclusions will end up featured in both ecosystem science textbooks and episodes of CSI,” says Brendan Bohannan, a microbial ecologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, who was not involved with the work. “You can’t say that about most scientific articles!”...
Articles (5)
The role of adaptive immunity as an ecological filter on the gut microbiota in zebrafish
The ISME Journal
2017 All animals live in intimate association with communities of microbes, collectively referred to as their microbiota. Certain host traits can influence which microbial taxa comprise the microbiota. One potentially important trait in vertebrate animals is the adaptive immune system, which has been hypothesized to act as an ecological filter, promoting the presence of some microbial taxa over others. Here we surveyed the intestinal microbiota of 68 wild-type zebrafish, with functional adaptive immunity, and 61 rag1− zebrafish, lacking functional B- and T-cell receptors, to test the role of adaptive immunity as an ecological filter on the intestinal microbiota. In addition, we tested the robustness of adaptive immunity’s filtering effects to host–host interaction by comparing the microbiota of fish populations segregated by genotype to those containing both genotypes. The presence of adaptive immunity individualized the gut microbiota and decreased the contributions of neutral processes to gut microbiota assembly. Although mixing genotypes led to increased phylogenetic diversity in each, there was no significant effect of adaptive immunity on gut microbiota composition in either housing condition. Interestingly, the most robust effect on microbiota composition was co-housing within a tank. In all, these results suggest that adaptive immunity has a role as an ecological filter of the zebrafish gut microbiota, but it can be overwhelmed by other factors, including transmission of microbes among hosts.
Conversion of Amazon rainforest to agriculture alters community traits of methane-cycling organisms
Molecular Ecology
2017 Land use change is one of the greatest environmental impacts worldwide, especially to tropical forests. The Amazon rainforest has been subject to particularly high rates of land use change, primarily to cattle pasture. A commonly observed response to cattle pasture establishment in the Amazon is the conversion of soil from a methane sink in rainforest, to a methane source in pasture. However, it is not known how the microorganisms that mediate methane flux are altered by land use change. Here, we use the deepest metagenomic sequencing of Amazonian soil to date to investigate differences in methane-cycling microorganisms and their traits across rainforest and cattle pasture soils. We found that methane-cycling microorganisms responded to land use change, with the strongest responses exhibited by methane-consuming, rather than methane-producing, microorganisms. These responses included a reduction in the relative abundance of methanotrophs and a significant decrease in the abundance of genes encoding particulate methane monooxygenase. We also observed compositional changes to methanotroph and methanogen communities as well as changes to methanotroph life history strategies. Our observations suggest that methane-cycling microorganisms are vulnerable to land use change, and this vulnerability may underlie the response of methane flux to land use change in Amazon soils.
Naturalistic Experimental Designs as Tools for Understanding the Role of Genes and the Environment in Prevention Research
Prevention Science
2017 Before genetic approaches were applied in experimental studies with human populations, they were used by animal and plant breeders to observe, and experimentally manipulate, the role of genes and environment on specific phenotypic or behavioral outcomes. For obvious ethical reasons, the same level of experimental control is not possible in human populations. Nonetheless, there are natural experimental designs in human populations that can serve as logical extensions of the rigorous quantitative genetic experimental designs used by animal and plant researchers. Applying concepts such as cross-fostering and common garden rearing approaches from the life science discipline, we describe human designs that can serve as naturalistic proxies for the controlled quantitative genetic experiments facilitated in life sciences research. We present the prevention relevance of three such human designs: (1) children adopted at birth by parents to whom they are not genetically related (common garden approach); (2) sibling designs where one sibling is reared from birth with unrelated adoptive parents and the other sibling is reared from birth by the biological mother of the sibling pair (cross-fostering approach); and (3) in vitro fertilization designs, including egg donation, sperm donation, embryo donation, and surrogacy (prenatal cross-fostering approach). Each of these designs allows for differentiation of the effects of the prenatal and/or postnatal rearing environment from effects of genes shared between parent and child in naturalistic ways that can inform prevention efforts. Example findings from each design type are provided and conclusions drawn about the relevance of naturalistic genetic designs to prevention science.
Microbial biogeography: putting microorganisms on the map
Nature Reviews Microbiology
2006 We review the biogeography of microorganisms in light of the biogeography of macroorganisms. A large body of research supports the idea that free-living microbial taxa exhibit biogeographic patterns. Current evidence confirms that, as proposed by the Baas-Becking hypothesis, 'the environment selects' and is, in part, responsible for spatial variation in microbial diversity. However, recent studies also dispute the idea that 'everything is everywhere'. We also consider how the processes that generate and maintain biogeographic patterns in macroorganisms could operate in the microbial world.
Local dispersal promotes biodiversity in a real-life game of rock–paper–scissors
Nature
2002 One of the central aims of ecology is to identify mechanisms that maintain biodiversity. Numerous theoretical models have shown that competing species can coexist if ecological processes such as dispersal, movement, and interaction occur over small spatial scales. In particular, this may be the case for non-transitive communities, that is, those without strict competitive hierarchies. The classic non-transitive system involves a community of three competing species satisfying a relationship similar to the children's game rock–paper–scissors, where rock crushes scissors, scissors cuts paper, and paper covers rock. Such relationships have been demonstrated in several natural systems. Some models predict that local interaction and dispersal are sufficient to ensure coexistence of all three species in such a community, whereas diversity is lost when ecological processes occur over larger scales. Here, we test these predictions empirically using a non-transitive model community containing three populations of Escherichia coli. We find that diversity is rapidly lost in our experimental community when dispersal and interaction occur over relatively large spatial scales, whereas all populations coexist when ecological processes are localized.
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