Catch us at Frontiers of Science Lecture Series watching our own Nobel Laureate, Mario Capecchi, giving a talk about "The Role of Microglia in OCD Spectrum Disorder". #science #universityofutah #Utes

A one-year update from Alex:

Hi all, my name is Kiona. I’m a PhD student @WUSTLdbbs conducting research Danforth Center. I study plant-microbe interactions & the mechanisms that make plants vulnerable to pathogens. #BlackBotanistWeek

Socially distant lab hike yesterday to see the wildflowers at Albion Basin in the Wasatch. Swipe for moose and a squirrel! #wasatchmountains #moose #wildflowersofinstagram #labfamily instagram.com/p/CDXXty7g17Sz…

Congratulations to post-doc Sara Weinstein on her recent publication on African crested rats! Great video below, and check out the paper too: tinyurl.com/y4fjvn6m

Great feature in the The New York Times! This Rat Covers Itself With Poison That Can Take Out an Elephant nytimes.com/2020/11/25/sci…

Wow, now an interview on NPR! Great clips, Dr. Weinstein! For Rats That Coat Themselves In Poison, These Rodents Are Surprisingly Cuddly npr.org/2020/11/27/938… #science #Lophiomys #poisonrats

Congratulations to graduate student Maggie for her recent @nanostringtech grant award! This will be used to gain a more complex dataset to understand host response to parasite infection, with varied microbiome starting points. 🎉

It’s a good day to be a coronavirus in Salt Lake County

Monarch munching mice, oh my! ICYMI, check out the press release highlighting the new Ecology paper from Sara Weinstein and Denise Dearing last month. Cute mouse videos included! attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/c…

Congrats to our graduate student Tess Stapleton (Tess Stapleton, PhD) on the acceptance of her first, first author paper in FEMS Microbiology Ecology!! Raise your glass!

APOPO is training HeroRATs for Search & Rescue. The rats have a great sense of smell, and can move through small spaces to search for survivors. The basic behavioral sequence is: search for victim, pull ball to communicate victim has been found, then return to trainer for reward.

New paper alert! Tess publishes another chapter of her thesis in Molecular Ecology Resources. In this study, we assessed the accuracy of plant metabarcoding for diet determination in non-ruminant herbivores. Go Tess and coauthors! doi.org/10.1111/1755-0…

New paper alert: Congrats to Maggie Doolin and Dr. Sara Weinstein (USU) on their new paper, "Pinworms are Associated with Taxonomic But Not Functional Differences in the Gut Microbiome of White-Throated Woodrats [...]" published in the J. of Parasitology! doi.org/10.1645/22-11

Lots of enthusiasm for learning about #DNAextraction and #mammals at Dylan Klure's Scientist in the Spotlight at NHMU last week. Thanks to Noah and Maggie for helping out.

A little delayed on posting this due to the holidays, but my 2nd dissertation chapter is officially published! We found that one of two common antiparasitics we tested changed the mouse gut microbiota. Check out the full paper: academic.oup.com/jid/advance-ar…