BMI Weekly News  

April 13, 2020 

News  

•  Attention all BMI Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Fellows.  You will soon receive an emailed letter related to maintaining progress toward your scientific and professional objectives during the laboratory shutdown.  Please watch for it. 

• Congratulations to Kevin Theis and members of the Eisthen lab at Michigan State University and the Foster lab at the University of Idaho had a paper published in eLife titled “The skin microbiome facilitates adaptive tetrodotoxin production in poisonous newts.” Here is the link: https://elifesciences.org/articles/53898. This comprehensive paper presents the dissertation work of Patric Vaelli (Eisthen Lab) and is a product of collaborative funds from the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action. Many animals have tetrodotoxin in their tissues as a predator defense mechanism, but rough-skinned newts have the highest concentrations of any animal due to their relationship with tetrodotoxin-resistant predatory garter snakes. Most undergraduate biology students are introduced to this evolutionary arms race as a classic example of coevolution. The current study shows that the microbiome is at the heart of this classic textbook example of macro-evolutionary ecology. 
The skin microbiome facilitates adaptive tetrodotoxin production in poisonous newts | eLife 

Rough-skinned newts produce tetrodotoxin or TTX, a deadly neurotoxin that is also present in some pufferfish, octopuses, crabs, starfish, flatworms, frogs, and toads. It remains a mystery why so many different creatures produce this toxin. One possibility is that TTX did not evolve in animals at all, but rather it is made by bacteria living on or in these creatures. elifesciences.org    

•  Mail and Receiving Services Update: https://i.wayne.edu/view/5e7911fd0ed8e. Except for emergencies, purchases of items that will need to be shipped to campus should be deferred until further notice.