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Welcome to The Bordenstein Laboratory
News and Lab Awards!
Postdoc Position Available in Bioinformatics. Contact Seth directly.
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Dr. Bordenstein is an evolutionary geneticist in the Department of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University. He is an Assistant Professor with broad interests in microbial-host interactions that have relevance to basic biology and applied biomedicine at multiple biological levels (i.e., genetic, ecological, evolutionary, and genomic). Specifically the lab is interested in:
1) The genomic events that shape parasitism and mutualism between animals and their microbes
2) The molecular evolution and applications of mobile genetic elements (phage, transposons, and plasmids) in bacteria
3) The significance of bacterial symbiosis in the origin of new animal species
4) The genetic basis of innate immunity to intracellular bacteria.
Wolbachia endosymbionts are an excellent microbial system to study these biological phenomena. The spread of this germline bacterium through the majority of animal species over the last 100 million years represents one of life's great pandemics. These studies will contribute to a fuller understanding of animal-microbe associations. They also have applications to improving human health through insect vector control strategies and therapeutics of human filarial diseases. |
