October 2019 Congrats to Annabelle on her review on the abundance, diversity, and plant-specific adaptations of plant-associated lactic acid bacteria published in Environmental Microbiology Reports.
July 2019 Maria joined the Kerry Health & Nutrition Institute's Scientific Advisory Council.
April 2019 Our paper showing how the bacterial composition in milk changes dramatically over the course of a day at each processing step was published in Applied Environmental Microbiology.
March 2019 Our paper on the identification of the bacterial receptor for the bacteriocin Plantaricin EF was published. This paper shows how the bacteriocin targets metal homeostasis in bacterial cells.
February 2019 Maria joined the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) Board of Directors.
January 2019 Our studies on how milk and milk fermented by Lactobacillus casei can prevent impairments to intestinal epithelial barrier integrity in Caco-2 cells was published this month in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
January 2019 We published a paper describing rapid assays to detect Mycoplasma bovis, an important bovine mastitis causing pathogen, in the Journal of Dairy Science. This work was brought about by our collaboration with Drs. Sharif Aly and Terry Lehenbauer in the UCD School of. Veterinary Medicine and with support from the California Dairy Resarch Foundation.
November 2018 Congratulations to Zeya on being awarded second place in the oral competition at Jiangnan University's Global Food Science Student Competition. She was one of 70 students competing from 60 Universities, representing 36 countries.
October 2018 Maria joined The Fermentation Association Advisory Board
November 2018 Our paper showing that L. plantarum iconsumption results in reduced weight gain and the barrier-protective properties of of the L.plantarum bacteriocin plantaricin EF was published in Gut Microbes.
October 2018 Our paper on how DNA sequencing and bioinformatics methods impact bacterial community analysis was published in mSphere.
October 2018 Our paper "Microbiota, metabolome, and immune alterations in obese mice fed a high-fat diet containing type 2 resistant starch", published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research, was one of the journal’s top 20 most downloaded recent papers in the past year
May 2018 Ellie's paper on the role of sucrose metabolism for Lactobacillus plantarum in the digestive tract was published in FEMS Microbiology Ecology
April 2018 Zach Quart and Hiu Mak presented their research at the UC Davis Undergraduate Research Conference. Well-done to two of our excellent undergraduate students!
April 2018 Congratulations to Ellie Yin on being selected for the John E. Kinsella Memorial Prize for outstanding research on her doctoral dissertation
April 2018 Congratulations to Eric Stevens on being selected for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship award
March 2018 Congratulations to Annabelle Yu on being selected to travel to Uganda this summer as part of a Trellis Fund Project from the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture.
February 2018 Maria was the guest editor on this year's Current Opinion in Biotechnology, Food Biotechnology issue
November 2017 Ellie's paper on the importance of Lactobacillus plantarum plantaricin synthesis in the GI tract was published
October 2017. Congratulations to Eric Stevens on his Science Communications Fellowship from the Sacramento Powerhouse Science Center!
October 2017. Our review on intestinal Lactobacillus and its association with health and disease was published in Current Opinion of Biotechnology. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copbio.2017.08.004)
September 2017. Ellie's paper on Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus milk- and low-temperature-associated proteomes was published in mSystems. This paper is a result of our collaboration with Drs. Velitchka Gotcheva and Angel Angelov at the University of Food Technologies, Bulgaria. (http://msystems.asm.org/content/2/5/e00027-17)
September 2017. Congrats to our ADA project team, and specifically to Javad, for our new comprehensive paper on dietary resistant starch and effects of RS type 2 on the gut and systemic health during consumption of a high fat diet. Journal of Molecular Food & Nutrition Research. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mnfr.201700184/)
September 2017. Ben's paper describing a novel NRPS/PKS system in Lactococcus lactis is published in Microbiology Open (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28921941)
September 2017 Ellie Yin's research on how dietary and intestinal Lactobacillus respond to dietary changes is now published in Scientific Reports: http://rdcu.be/uK9j
June 2017 Our lab's work on milk and dairy products was featured on the UC Davis One Health Blog
January 2017 Both Elissa Goldman and Patricia Matus are recipients of the UC Davis Provost's Undergraduate Fellowships.
December 2016 Check out our new review article on the health benefits of fermented foods: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1UEQe_LoKFta2w
December 2016 Koen Askamp, an MS student from Wageningen University, joined our lab for a six-month internship.
November 2016 Ya-Yun (Jenny) Wang, a PhD student from the National Chung Hsing University, joined the lab for a year long internship.
November 2016 Casper Jamin, an MS student from Wageningen University, joined our lab for a six-month internship.
October 2016 New publication in Frontiers in Microbiology on comparisons of fecal processing methods for metagenomics analyses: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01643/full
August 2016 ASM Microbe Magazine feature article on Fermented Foods: http://www.asmscience.org/content/journal/microbe/11/8
August 2016 New publication on the bacterial composition in raw milk in tanker trucks and silos at CA dairy processors. This article has a press release and has been covered by a number of news media sources: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/milk-truck-microbial-study-aims-improve-dairy-food-safety-and-quality
June 2016 Nathan Lee and Kane Tian join our lab for the UCD Young Scholar's Program (YSP). Nate and Lee are impressive high school students here to take classes and perform research for 6 weeks this summer.
June 2016 Congratulations to Dustin for his poster award at the ISAPP meeting in Turku, Finland!
May 2016 Welcome to Natalia Ribeiro, an undergraduate student from the University of Campinas, Brazil. She will be performing a summer internship in our lab through a Science Without Borders Scholarship program.
May 2016 The lab welcomes Dr. Kanika Chauhan, a new postdoctoral scholar, to the lab. She will be studying pathogens that cause bovine mastitis.
April 2016 Zeya wins the IFT Feeding Tomorrow Graduate Scholarship. Way to go Zeya!
April 2016 Ben Golomb was awarded the Max Kleiber Thesis Research Prize. Congratulations to Ben on this impressive honor.
April 2016 New publication in Scientific Reports on the transcriptome of Lactobacillus plantarum and the indigenous bacteria in the small intestine. Congrats to Ben for his lead authorship on this paper- http://www.nature.com/articles/srep24723
For more information, see the press release on the paper: http://blogs.ucdavis.edu/egghead/
March 2016 Dustin was awarded a prestigious NSF Research Fellowship award. Way to go, Dustin!
March 2016 Congratulations to Zeya for her admittance into the Food Science Graduate Group PhD program.
February 2016 New paper in Journal of Applied Microbiology (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2672/accepted) This paper details our investigations on the metabolic capacities of Lactobacillus florum and specifically the production of erythritol and mannitol. Congrats to Charlotte on her dedication to this project!
February 2016 New paper in Frontiers in Microbiology (http://journal.frontiersin.org) on the limitations of using PMA and RNA to quantify viable bacterial cells on plants. This paper was featured on the Barfblog (http://barfblog.com/)
February 2016 Check out Dorothy Kieffer's new paper on resistant starch amelioration of chronic kidney disease and effects on the gut microbiota and metabolome just published in The AMJ Renal Physiology (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26841824). UPDATE (April 2016) This paper was selected by the American Physiological Society to be recognized as among the best recently published articles in physiological research!
February 2016 Congratulations to Ben Golomb for completing his PhD on the adaptations of Lactococcus lactis and Lactobacillus plantarum to their hosts. We wish you much success at your new job!
November 2015 Dr. Zhengyuan Zhai has joined our group. Dr. Zhai joins us from the China Agricultural University and has a fellowship from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (CPSF).
July 2015 Two new publications from our lab on probiotic - dairy connections for health benefits:
http://blogs.ucdavis.edu/egghead/2015/07/13/dairy-products-boost-effectiveness-of-probiotics-new-studies-show/
http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/ucd-study-dairy-products-boost-effectiveness-of-probiotics/
June 2015 Pujita Munnagni, a very talented high school student, joins our lab through the UC Davis Young Scholar's Program (http://ysp.ucdavis.edu/). Welcome Pujita!
April 2015 The USDA announced our new NIFA AFRI grant in the Food Quality program:
http://nifa.usda.gov/resource/usda-awards-nearly-19-million-grants-enhance-food-safety-research
With this grant, we will investigate plant-associated lactic acid bacteria for novel functional traits relevant to food processing and human health. We will employ genetic and functional screening methods to better understand these bacteria in plant-based foods.
March 2015 Irene Yim, a McNair Scholar, joins the lab to perform her undergraduate research. Welcome Irene!
December 2014 Bokyung Lee completed her PhD in Food Science. Her studies have shown the significant impact that the food delivery matrix has on probiotic efficacy in the digestive tract. Congratulations Bokyung!
November 2014 Ben Golomb's paper was published in the Journal of Bacteriology on the transcriptome and metabolome of Lactococcus lactis KF147 during growth on plant tissues.
November 2014 Wentin Ju (postdoc) accepted a position at Mérieux NutriSciences. He will be working on food safety programs closer to home in China. Congratulations Wenting!
October 2014 Commentary published in the ASM monthly magazine Microbe on the contributions of Herbert Conn to microbiology. This paper was the result of an ASM Milestones in Microbiology at the University of Connecticut event to honor this pioneer in dairy microbiology in the USA.
September 2014 Galya Blagoeva returns to the lab as a USDA FAS Borlaug Fellow. Galya's 3 month project is to investigate the unique properties of starch-degrading lactic acid bacteria. Her work here is an extension of her PhD thesis project at the UFT, Bulgaria.
August 2014 Charlotte Tyler completed her MS degree. Charlotte studied the metabolism of plant-associated lactic acid bacteria and the function of yeasts and bacteria in olive fermentations. We will miss you Charlotte!
August 2014 Paper published in mBio showing how it is possible to transplant microbial communities from one plant to another. This technique is useful for dissecting microbial community interactions in the phyllosphere.
April 2014 The lab welcomes Galya Blagoeva from the University of Food Technologies, Bulgaria for a PhD fellowship visit
March 2014 Paper published in the Annuals of the New York Academy of Science on factors influencing probiotic efficacy and guidelines for evaluating probiotic safety and efficacy.
February 2014 Xiaochen Yin's paper on the effects of dairy and probiotic consumption on the indigenous intestinal microbiota was published in the Journal of Dairy Science. Consistent but non-overlapping effects were found with the ingestion of Lactobacillus casei and milk.
January 2014 Lauren Kopit and Eun Bae Kim's examination of the safety of Enterococcus faecium NRRL B-2354 was published in Applied Environmental Microbiology. Using a combined genomics and phenotyping approach, we confirmed the suitability of this strain for use as a surrogate organism in place of Salmonella in tests of thermal processing procedures for food products.
October 2013 Congratulations to Tom Williams for winning first place in the Robert Mondavi Institute graduate poster prize. His poster was selected out of 14 entries. Well done Tom!
October 2013 Eun Bae Kim's paper on Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis comparative genomics was published in Applied Environmental Microbiology. This paper shows that community (non-clinical) strains of E. faecium but not E. faecalis have different genomic features from clinical (hospital-associated) strains.
September 2013 Sybille Tachon's paper was published in Environmental Microbiology. This paper provides compelling evidence that probiotics can be more or less effective depending on the diet consumed by the host. Probiotic Lactobacillus survived in higher numbers in the digestive tract and was more protective against intestinal inflammation in mice consuming a high-fat, high-sugar diet.
September 2013 Congratulations to Eun Bae on his new job as a faculty member at the Department of Animal Products and Food Science, College of Animal Life Sciences, Kangwon National University, Republic of Korea
August 2013 Congratulations to Yelizaveta (Liza) Luchkovska on her award of the Provost's Undergraduate Fellowship! She will use the funds she received in this award to support her investigations on the microbial diversity of olive fermentations.
August 2013 New publication on the detection of viable E. coli O157:H7 on field and growth chamber lettuce:
Assessments of total and viable Escherichia coli O157:H7 on field and laboratory grown lettuce
Moyne, Harris, and Marco in PLoSOne. e70643
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0070643
July 2013 New publication on the microbiota in the lettuce phyllosphere:
Season, irrigation, leaf age, and Escherichia coli inoculation influence the bacterial diversity in the lettuce phyllosphere. by Williams, Moyne, Harris, and Marco in PLoSOne. e68642 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=phyllosphere+marco+and+williams
July 2013 Congratulations to Lauren! Lauren Kopit won 3rd place in developing scientist competition at the International Association of Food Protection meeting held in Charlotte, North Carolina, July 29-Aug 1. She presented her work on the surrogate strain Enterococcus faecium NRRL B-2354.
She also recently received her MS in Viticulture and Enology and is the first to graduate from the lab. We will miss you Lauren
June 2013 Our lab was featured in the journal International Innovation (see publications page)
May 2013 Kick-off on our new project "Bacterial signatures of milk quality" sponsored by the California Dairy Research Foundation. See here for the interview and press release: http://cdrf.org/2013/05/15/meet-maria-marco-a-microbiologist-determined-to-apply-advanced-microbial-genomics-research-to-dairy-product-innovations/
May 2013 Congratulations to Xiaochen (Ellie) Yin on her publication in The Journal of Immunology (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23585682). The
study, led by the group of Richard A Flavell (Yale University) shows the role of IL-22 in shaping the intestinal microbiota and the transmissible susceptibility to inflammatory colitis due to altered microbiota in IL-22-deficient mice. Ellie performed the gut microbiota analyses in this study. The paper was also highlighted by the journal (http://www.jimmunol.org/content/190/10/4913).
April 2013 Congratulations to Tom Williams! He won both the Chancellor's Grand prize and the Dean's prize in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Science for his oral presentation at the UC Davis Interdisciplinary Graduate Symposium (http://gradstudies.ucdavis.edu/about/igps.html).
Way to go Tom!
January 2013 Eun Bae Kim is the first author on a paper describing the first genome sequence of Lactobacillus florum
October 2012 Review article by Sybille Tachon and Maria entitled "Environmental factors influencing the efficacy of probiotic bacteria" was published in the Current Opinion in Biotechnology. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/aip/09581669
October 2012 Lauren Kopit won 2nd place in the annual RMI graduate student poster competition for her poster entitled "Evaluation of the safety of Enterococcus faecium NRRL B-2354 used in thermal process validation". Lauren is a 2nd year MS student in V&E. Her project is funded by the Almond Board of California. Congratulations Lauren!
October 2012 Check out our new publication on fermented olives and pectinolytic yeast from olives associated with spoilage in Food Microbiology. http://attach.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740002012001967
October 2012 The genome announcement for Enterococcus faecalis ATCC29212 was just published in the Journal of Bacteriology. http://jb.asm.org/content/194/21/6006.full.pdf+html
September 2012 Visit from Roland Siezen and Lex Overmars from Nijmegen University to develop our collaboration on enterococcal genomes.
August 2012 New lab publication on how the intestinal microbiota in aged mice is modified by the consumption of dietary resistant starch and correlated to improvements in host feeding responses, weight, and production of proglucagon. Tachon et al in FEMS Microbiology Ecology. In press. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22909308
August 2012 Probiotics for cleaning countertops? See article published in the Bay Area News Group. http://newsle.com/article/0/28726504/
August 2012 The Marco lab has a new collaboration to investigate Lactobacillus bulgaricus together with faculty at the University of Food Technologies, Plovdiv, Bulgaria through the America Bulgaria Foundation http://www.americaforbulgaria.org
July 2012 The Marco lab was awarded funds through the UC Davis RISE grant program. The grant is for 3 years of support to develop new RNA-Based, Amplification Free, Pathogen Identification methods Using Nano-Enabled Electronic Detection (RAPID-NEED). http://www.research.ucdavis.edu/pgc/fo/RISE
July 2012 The Scientist highlights probiotics and Maria and the Marco lab is cited. : http://the-scientist.com/2012/07/01/alternative-medicines/#probiotic
June 2012 Maria was nominated for a 2012 ASUCD Excellence in Education Award. This award is completely student-funded, student-nominated, and student-chosen. Maria sends her thanks to the students in FST104 for the nomination. It is an amazing honor and such an amazing award considering that Food Microbiology is definitely not an easy A!
May 2012 Tom Williams is featured by the UC Davis Office of Graduate Studies
http://gradstudies.ucdavis.edu/publications/news/studenthighlights.html
Maria was selected to be a Lecturer for the 2012-2014 American Society for Microbiology Branch Lectureships (ASMBL) program.
http://www.asm.org/index.php/membership/about-the-asm-branch-lectureships.html
March 2011 The Marcolab was featured in a KQED QUEST video on the making of Sourdough.
http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/science-on-the-spot-secrets-of-sourdough/
July 2019 Maria joined the Kerry Health & Nutrition Institute's Scientific Advisory Council.
April 2019 Our paper showing how the bacterial composition in milk changes dramatically over the course of a day at each processing step was published in Applied Environmental Microbiology.
March 2019 Our paper on the identification of the bacterial receptor for the bacteriocin Plantaricin EF was published. This paper shows how the bacteriocin targets metal homeostasis in bacterial cells.
February 2019 Maria joined the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) Board of Directors.
January 2019 Our studies on how milk and milk fermented by Lactobacillus casei can prevent impairments to intestinal epithelial barrier integrity in Caco-2 cells was published this month in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
January 2019 We published a paper describing rapid assays to detect Mycoplasma bovis, an important bovine mastitis causing pathogen, in the Journal of Dairy Science. This work was brought about by our collaboration with Drs. Sharif Aly and Terry Lehenbauer in the UCD School of. Veterinary Medicine and with support from the California Dairy Resarch Foundation.
November 2018 Congratulations to Zeya on being awarded second place in the oral competition at Jiangnan University's Global Food Science Student Competition. She was one of 70 students competing from 60 Universities, representing 36 countries.
October 2018 Maria joined The Fermentation Association Advisory Board
November 2018 Our paper showing that L. plantarum iconsumption results in reduced weight gain and the barrier-protective properties of of the L.plantarum bacteriocin plantaricin EF was published in Gut Microbes.
October 2018 Our paper on how DNA sequencing and bioinformatics methods impact bacterial community analysis was published in mSphere.
October 2018 Our paper "Microbiota, metabolome, and immune alterations in obese mice fed a high-fat diet containing type 2 resistant starch", published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research, was one of the journal’s top 20 most downloaded recent papers in the past year
May 2018 Ellie's paper on the role of sucrose metabolism for Lactobacillus plantarum in the digestive tract was published in FEMS Microbiology Ecology
April 2018 Zach Quart and Hiu Mak presented their research at the UC Davis Undergraduate Research Conference. Well-done to two of our excellent undergraduate students!
April 2018 Congratulations to Ellie Yin on being selected for the John E. Kinsella Memorial Prize for outstanding research on her doctoral dissertation
April 2018 Congratulations to Eric Stevens on being selected for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship award
March 2018 Congratulations to Annabelle Yu on being selected to travel to Uganda this summer as part of a Trellis Fund Project from the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture.
February 2018 Maria was the guest editor on this year's Current Opinion in Biotechnology, Food Biotechnology issue
November 2017 Ellie's paper on the importance of Lactobacillus plantarum plantaricin synthesis in the GI tract was published
October 2017. Congratulations to Eric Stevens on his Science Communications Fellowship from the Sacramento Powerhouse Science Center!
October 2017. Our review on intestinal Lactobacillus and its association with health and disease was published in Current Opinion of Biotechnology. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copbio.2017.08.004)
September 2017. Ellie's paper on Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus milk- and low-temperature-associated proteomes was published in mSystems. This paper is a result of our collaboration with Drs. Velitchka Gotcheva and Angel Angelov at the University of Food Technologies, Bulgaria. (http://msystems.asm.org/content/2/5/e00027-17)
September 2017. Congrats to our ADA project team, and specifically to Javad, for our new comprehensive paper on dietary resistant starch and effects of RS type 2 on the gut and systemic health during consumption of a high fat diet. Journal of Molecular Food & Nutrition Research. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mnfr.201700184/)
September 2017. Ben's paper describing a novel NRPS/PKS system in Lactococcus lactis is published in Microbiology Open (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28921941)
September 2017 Ellie Yin's research on how dietary and intestinal Lactobacillus respond to dietary changes is now published in Scientific Reports: http://rdcu.be/uK9j
June 2017 Our lab's work on milk and dairy products was featured on the UC Davis One Health Blog
January 2017 Both Elissa Goldman and Patricia Matus are recipients of the UC Davis Provost's Undergraduate Fellowships.
December 2016 Check out our new review article on the health benefits of fermented foods: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1UEQe_LoKFta2w
December 2016 Koen Askamp, an MS student from Wageningen University, joined our lab for a six-month internship.
November 2016 Ya-Yun (Jenny) Wang, a PhD student from the National Chung Hsing University, joined the lab for a year long internship.
November 2016 Casper Jamin, an MS student from Wageningen University, joined our lab for a six-month internship.
October 2016 New publication in Frontiers in Microbiology on comparisons of fecal processing methods for metagenomics analyses: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01643/full
August 2016 ASM Microbe Magazine feature article on Fermented Foods: http://www.asmscience.org/content/journal/microbe/11/8
August 2016 New publication on the bacterial composition in raw milk in tanker trucks and silos at CA dairy processors. This article has a press release and has been covered by a number of news media sources: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/milk-truck-microbial-study-aims-improve-dairy-food-safety-and-quality
June 2016 Nathan Lee and Kane Tian join our lab for the UCD Young Scholar's Program (YSP). Nate and Lee are impressive high school students here to take classes and perform research for 6 weeks this summer.
June 2016 Congratulations to Dustin for his poster award at the ISAPP meeting in Turku, Finland!
May 2016 Welcome to Natalia Ribeiro, an undergraduate student from the University of Campinas, Brazil. She will be performing a summer internship in our lab through a Science Without Borders Scholarship program.
May 2016 The lab welcomes Dr. Kanika Chauhan, a new postdoctoral scholar, to the lab. She will be studying pathogens that cause bovine mastitis.
April 2016 Zeya wins the IFT Feeding Tomorrow Graduate Scholarship. Way to go Zeya!
April 2016 Ben Golomb was awarded the Max Kleiber Thesis Research Prize. Congratulations to Ben on this impressive honor.
April 2016 New publication in Scientific Reports on the transcriptome of Lactobacillus plantarum and the indigenous bacteria in the small intestine. Congrats to Ben for his lead authorship on this paper- http://www.nature.com/articles/srep24723
For more information, see the press release on the paper: http://blogs.ucdavis.edu/egghead/
March 2016 Dustin was awarded a prestigious NSF Research Fellowship award. Way to go, Dustin!
March 2016 Congratulations to Zeya for her admittance into the Food Science Graduate Group PhD program.
February 2016 New paper in Journal of Applied Microbiology (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2672/accepted) This paper details our investigations on the metabolic capacities of Lactobacillus florum and specifically the production of erythritol and mannitol. Congrats to Charlotte on her dedication to this project!
February 2016 New paper in Frontiers in Microbiology (http://journal.frontiersin.org) on the limitations of using PMA and RNA to quantify viable bacterial cells on plants. This paper was featured on the Barfblog (http://barfblog.com/)
February 2016 Check out Dorothy Kieffer's new paper on resistant starch amelioration of chronic kidney disease and effects on the gut microbiota and metabolome just published in The AMJ Renal Physiology (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26841824). UPDATE (April 2016) This paper was selected by the American Physiological Society to be recognized as among the best recently published articles in physiological research!
February 2016 Congratulations to Ben Golomb for completing his PhD on the adaptations of Lactococcus lactis and Lactobacillus plantarum to their hosts. We wish you much success at your new job!
November 2015 Dr. Zhengyuan Zhai has joined our group. Dr. Zhai joins us from the China Agricultural University and has a fellowship from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (CPSF).
July 2015 Two new publications from our lab on probiotic - dairy connections for health benefits:
http://blogs.ucdavis.edu/egghead/2015/07/13/dairy-products-boost-effectiveness-of-probiotics-new-studies-show/
http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/ucd-study-dairy-products-boost-effectiveness-of-probiotics/
June 2015 Pujita Munnagni, a very talented high school student, joins our lab through the UC Davis Young Scholar's Program (http://ysp.ucdavis.edu/). Welcome Pujita!
April 2015 The USDA announced our new NIFA AFRI grant in the Food Quality program:
http://nifa.usda.gov/resource/usda-awards-nearly-19-million-grants-enhance-food-safety-research
With this grant, we will investigate plant-associated lactic acid bacteria for novel functional traits relevant to food processing and human health. We will employ genetic and functional screening methods to better understand these bacteria in plant-based foods.
March 2015 Irene Yim, a McNair Scholar, joins the lab to perform her undergraduate research. Welcome Irene!
December 2014 Bokyung Lee completed her PhD in Food Science. Her studies have shown the significant impact that the food delivery matrix has on probiotic efficacy in the digestive tract. Congratulations Bokyung!
November 2014 Ben Golomb's paper was published in the Journal of Bacteriology on the transcriptome and metabolome of Lactococcus lactis KF147 during growth on plant tissues.
November 2014 Wentin Ju (postdoc) accepted a position at Mérieux NutriSciences. He will be working on food safety programs closer to home in China. Congratulations Wenting!
October 2014 Commentary published in the ASM monthly magazine Microbe on the contributions of Herbert Conn to microbiology. This paper was the result of an ASM Milestones in Microbiology at the University of Connecticut event to honor this pioneer in dairy microbiology in the USA.
September 2014 Galya Blagoeva returns to the lab as a USDA FAS Borlaug Fellow. Galya's 3 month project is to investigate the unique properties of starch-degrading lactic acid bacteria. Her work here is an extension of her PhD thesis project at the UFT, Bulgaria.
August 2014 Charlotte Tyler completed her MS degree. Charlotte studied the metabolism of plant-associated lactic acid bacteria and the function of yeasts and bacteria in olive fermentations. We will miss you Charlotte!
August 2014 Paper published in mBio showing how it is possible to transplant microbial communities from one plant to another. This technique is useful for dissecting microbial community interactions in the phyllosphere.
April 2014 The lab welcomes Galya Blagoeva from the University of Food Technologies, Bulgaria for a PhD fellowship visit
March 2014 Paper published in the Annuals of the New York Academy of Science on factors influencing probiotic efficacy and guidelines for evaluating probiotic safety and efficacy.
February 2014 Xiaochen Yin's paper on the effects of dairy and probiotic consumption on the indigenous intestinal microbiota was published in the Journal of Dairy Science. Consistent but non-overlapping effects were found with the ingestion of Lactobacillus casei and milk.
January 2014 Lauren Kopit and Eun Bae Kim's examination of the safety of Enterococcus faecium NRRL B-2354 was published in Applied Environmental Microbiology. Using a combined genomics and phenotyping approach, we confirmed the suitability of this strain for use as a surrogate organism in place of Salmonella in tests of thermal processing procedures for food products.
October 2013 Congratulations to Tom Williams for winning first place in the Robert Mondavi Institute graduate poster prize. His poster was selected out of 14 entries. Well done Tom!
October 2013 Eun Bae Kim's paper on Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis comparative genomics was published in Applied Environmental Microbiology. This paper shows that community (non-clinical) strains of E. faecium but not E. faecalis have different genomic features from clinical (hospital-associated) strains.
September 2013 Sybille Tachon's paper was published in Environmental Microbiology. This paper provides compelling evidence that probiotics can be more or less effective depending on the diet consumed by the host. Probiotic Lactobacillus survived in higher numbers in the digestive tract and was more protective against intestinal inflammation in mice consuming a high-fat, high-sugar diet.
September 2013 Congratulations to Eun Bae on his new job as a faculty member at the Department of Animal Products and Food Science, College of Animal Life Sciences, Kangwon National University, Republic of Korea
August 2013 Congratulations to Yelizaveta (Liza) Luchkovska on her award of the Provost's Undergraduate Fellowship! She will use the funds she received in this award to support her investigations on the microbial diversity of olive fermentations.
August 2013 New publication on the detection of viable E. coli O157:H7 on field and growth chamber lettuce:
Assessments of total and viable Escherichia coli O157:H7 on field and laboratory grown lettuce
Moyne, Harris, and Marco in PLoSOne. e70643
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0070643
July 2013 New publication on the microbiota in the lettuce phyllosphere:
Season, irrigation, leaf age, and Escherichia coli inoculation influence the bacterial diversity in the lettuce phyllosphere. by Williams, Moyne, Harris, and Marco in PLoSOne. e68642 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=phyllosphere+marco+and+williams
July 2013 Congratulations to Lauren! Lauren Kopit won 3rd place in developing scientist competition at the International Association of Food Protection meeting held in Charlotte, North Carolina, July 29-Aug 1. She presented her work on the surrogate strain Enterococcus faecium NRRL B-2354.
She also recently received her MS in Viticulture and Enology and is the first to graduate from the lab. We will miss you Lauren
June 2013 Our lab was featured in the journal International Innovation (see publications page)
May 2013 Kick-off on our new project "Bacterial signatures of milk quality" sponsored by the California Dairy Research Foundation. See here for the interview and press release: http://cdrf.org/2013/05/15/meet-maria-marco-a-microbiologist-determined-to-apply-advanced-microbial-genomics-research-to-dairy-product-innovations/
May 2013 Congratulations to Xiaochen (Ellie) Yin on her publication in The Journal of Immunology (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23585682). The
study, led by the group of Richard A Flavell (Yale University) shows the role of IL-22 in shaping the intestinal microbiota and the transmissible susceptibility to inflammatory colitis due to altered microbiota in IL-22-deficient mice. Ellie performed the gut microbiota analyses in this study. The paper was also highlighted by the journal (http://www.jimmunol.org/content/190/10/4913).
April 2013 Congratulations to Tom Williams! He won both the Chancellor's Grand prize and the Dean's prize in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Science for his oral presentation at the UC Davis Interdisciplinary Graduate Symposium (http://gradstudies.ucdavis.edu/about/igps.html).
Way to go Tom!
January 2013 Eun Bae Kim is the first author on a paper describing the first genome sequence of Lactobacillus florum
October 2012 Review article by Sybille Tachon and Maria entitled "Environmental factors influencing the efficacy of probiotic bacteria" was published in the Current Opinion in Biotechnology. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/aip/09581669
October 2012 Lauren Kopit won 2nd place in the annual RMI graduate student poster competition for her poster entitled "Evaluation of the safety of Enterococcus faecium NRRL B-2354 used in thermal process validation". Lauren is a 2nd year MS student in V&E. Her project is funded by the Almond Board of California. Congratulations Lauren!
October 2012 Check out our new publication on fermented olives and pectinolytic yeast from olives associated with spoilage in Food Microbiology. http://attach.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740002012001967
October 2012 The genome announcement for Enterococcus faecalis ATCC29212 was just published in the Journal of Bacteriology. http://jb.asm.org/content/194/21/6006.full.pdf+html
September 2012 Visit from Roland Siezen and Lex Overmars from Nijmegen University to develop our collaboration on enterococcal genomes.
August 2012 New lab publication on how the intestinal microbiota in aged mice is modified by the consumption of dietary resistant starch and correlated to improvements in host feeding responses, weight, and production of proglucagon. Tachon et al in FEMS Microbiology Ecology. In press. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22909308
August 2012 Probiotics for cleaning countertops? See article published in the Bay Area News Group. http://newsle.com/article/0/28726504/
August 2012 The Marco lab has a new collaboration to investigate Lactobacillus bulgaricus together with faculty at the University of Food Technologies, Plovdiv, Bulgaria through the America Bulgaria Foundation http://www.americaforbulgaria.org
July 2012 The Marco lab was awarded funds through the UC Davis RISE grant program. The grant is for 3 years of support to develop new RNA-Based, Amplification Free, Pathogen Identification methods Using Nano-Enabled Electronic Detection (RAPID-NEED). http://www.research.ucdavis.edu/pgc/fo/RISE
July 2012 The Scientist highlights probiotics and Maria and the Marco lab is cited. : http://the-scientist.com/2012/07/01/alternative-medicines/#probiotic
June 2012 Maria was nominated for a 2012 ASUCD Excellence in Education Award. This award is completely student-funded, student-nominated, and student-chosen. Maria sends her thanks to the students in FST104 for the nomination. It is an amazing honor and such an amazing award considering that Food Microbiology is definitely not an easy A!
May 2012 Tom Williams is featured by the UC Davis Office of Graduate Studies
http://gradstudies.ucdavis.edu/publications/news/studenthighlights.html
Maria was selected to be a Lecturer for the 2012-2014 American Society for Microbiology Branch Lectureships (ASMBL) program.
http://www.asm.org/index.php/membership/about-the-asm-branch-lectureships.html
March 2011 The Marcolab was featured in a KQED QUEST video on the making of Sourdough.
http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/science-on-the-spot-secrets-of-sourdough/