Welkin H. Pope

TL;DR: A general model in which faculty and teaching assistants from diverse academic institutions are trained to teach a research course for first-year undergraduate students focused on bacteriophage discovery and genomics is developed, showing that this alliance-sourced model not only substantially advances the field of phage genomics but also stimulates students’ interest in science, positively influences academic achievement, and enhances persistence inScience, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.

TL;DR: Expansion of a collection of sequenced phage genomes to a total of 60-all infecting a common bacterial host-provides further insight into their diversity and evolution.

TL;DR: To understand the population structure of phages infecting a single host strain, 627 phages of Mycobacterium smegmatis were isolated, sequenced, and compared to reveal a continuum of genetic diversity, albeit with uneven representation of different phages.

TL;DR: Characterization of ten Cluster N temperate mycobacteriophages revealed at least five distinct prophage-expressed viral defence systems that interfere with the infection of lytic and temperate phages that are either closely related (homotypic defence) or unrelated (heterotypic Defence) to the prophages.

TL;DR: Experimental and computational analyses identified genes likely involved in virion formation, nucleotide synthesis, and DNA replication and repair in Syn9 that suggest that Syn9 is well adapted to the physiology of its photosynthetic hosts and may affect the evolution of these sequences within marine cyanobacteria.