The Gut Commensal Microbiome of Is Modified by the Endosymbiont .

Endosymbiotic bacteria and the gut microbiome have independently been shown to affect several aspects of insect biology, including reproduction, development, life span, stem cell activity, and resistance to human pathogens, in insect vectors. This work shows that bacteria, which reside mainly in the fly germline, affect the microbial species present in the fly gut in a lab-reared strain. hosts two main genera of commensal bacteria- and .

A high-throughput assay for the comprehensive profiling of DNA ligase fidelity.

DNA ligases have broad application in molecular biology, from traditional cloning methods to modern synthetic biology and molecular diagnostics protocols. Ligation-based detection of polynucleotide sequences can be achieved by the ligation of probe oligonucleotides when annealed to a complementary target sequence. In order to achieve a high sensitivity and low background, the ligase must efficiently join correctly base-paired substrates, while discriminating against the ligation of substrates containing even one mismatched base pair.

Adapting capillary gel electrophoresis as a sensitive, high-throughput method to accelerate characterization of nucleic acid metabolic enzymes.

Detailed biochemical characterization of nucleic acid enzymes is fundamental to understanding nucleic acid metabolism, genome replication and repair. We report the development of a rapid, high-throughput fluorescence capillary gel electrophoresis method as an alternative to traditional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis to characterize nucleic acid metabolic enzymes. The principles of assay design described here can be applied to nearly any enzyme system that acts on a fluorescently labeled oligonucleotide substrate.