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Seth Bordenstein
Assistant Scientist |
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Tel.
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(508) 289-7220
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Fax
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(508) 457-4727
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E-Mail
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Send mail!
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Address
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Marine Biological Laboratory
Lillie 304
7 MBL Street
Woods Hole, MA 02543
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Member of the Mobile Genetic Element Cluster
Bordenstein Lab Website
Discover the Microbes Within: The Wolbachia Project Website
(HHMI/MBL High School Lab Series)
Seth Bordenstein's CV >>
Dr. Bordenstein is an evolutionary geneticist in the Josephine Bay Paul Center and has broad interests in bacterial endosymbiosis, bacteriophages, and symbiont-assisted speciation. Using molecular evolution, genomics, and classical genetic techniques, the Bordenstein lab addresses the following research questions:
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How do the genomes of parasites and mutualists evolve in endosymbionts?
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How important are genome interactions between microbes and hosts?
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Does endosymbiosis spawn new host species?
The Bordenstein lab is broadly interested 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 we focus on the genomic basis of endosymbiotic associations, in which one organism lives and replicates within another organism. Without the establishment of such endosymbioses billions of years ago, life as we know it today would be unrecognizable. From the origin of the eukaryotic cell to the formation of entirely new ecosystems, ancient endosymbioses involving a bacterial partner initiated several major evolutionary and ecological transitions in the history of Life. Today, young systems of endosymbiotic bacteria are still formidable players in shaping Life, spurring on the evolution of incipient organelles and posing threats to the reproductive strategies of their animal hosts. Our research aims are to draw general conclusions about the genomic events that shape intracellular parasitism and mutualism, the impacts of mobile DNA on intracellular bacteria, the role of endosymbiotic bacteria in the origin of new species, and the evolution of microbe-host genome interactions.
Seth is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University.
Graduate students interested in joining the lab are welcome through the
Brown-MBL Joint Graduate Program
and can contact Seth with a description of research
interests and curriculum vitae.
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Wolbachia cell infecting the testes of the parasitic wasp Nasonia vitripennis. Within the Wolbachia endosymbiont are small horizontally-transferring bacteriophage WO particles that parasitize Wolbachia. The inset shows an enlargement of the phage particles that demonstrates the icosohedral structures and thin tails of many phages.
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The parasitic wasp Nasonia vitripennis is host to the endocellular parasite Wolbachia, which is host to the intracellular phage parasite shown in the above micrograph. Nasonia are an excellent laboratory system for studying the tripartite interactions of eukaryotes-prokaryotes-viruses.
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Recent publications:
Bordenstein, S.R. 2007.
Discover the microbes within: The Wolbachia project.
Focus on Microbiology Education 14:1, Special Issue on K-12 Education.
Bordenstein, S.R. 2007.
Evolutionary genomics: Transdomain gene transfers.
Current Biology 17:R935.
Bordenstein, S.R. and J.H. Werren. (2007)
Bidirectional incompatibility among divergent Wolbachia and incompatibility level differences
among closely related Wolbachia in Nasonia. Heredity 99: 278-287.
Panagiotis I., J. C. D. Hotopp, P. Sapountzis, S. Siozios, G. Tsiamis, S. R. Bordenstein,
L. Baldo, J. H. Werren and K. Bourtzis. (2007)
On the origin of DNA replication of Wolbachia and closely related bacteria. BMC Genomics 8:182
Link >>
Lo, N., C. Paraskevopoulos, K. Bourtzis, S.L. O'Neill, J.H. Werren,
S.R. Bordenstein, and C. Bandi. (2007)
Taxonomic status of the intracellular bacterium Wolbachia pipientis.
International Journal of Systematics and Evolutionary Microbiology
57, 654-657.
Link >>
Sanogo, Y.O., S.L. Dobson, S.R. Bordenstein, and R.J. Novak. (2007)
Disruption of the Wolbachia surface protein gene wspB by a transposable
element in mosquitoes of the Culex pipiens complex (Diptera: Culicidae).
Insect Molecular Biology 16(2): 143-154.
Paraskevopoulus, C., S.R. Bordenstein, J.J. Wernegreen, J.H. Werren, and K. Bourtzis. (2006)
Towards a Wolbachia multilocus sequence typing system: Discrimination of Wolbachia
strains present in Drosophila species. Current Microbiology 53(5): 388-395.
Baldo, L., Dunning-Hotopp, J., Bordenstein, S.R., Biber, S.A., Jollie, K., Tettelin, H., Maiden, M.,
Hayashi, C., and J.H. Werren. (2006) A Multilocus Sequence Typing system for the endosymbiont
Wolbachia. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 72(11): 7098-7110.
Link >>
Baldo, L., S.R. Bordenstein, J. J. Wernegreen, and J. H. Werren (2006). Widespread recombination throughout Wolbachia genomes. Molecular Biology and Evolution 23: 437-449.
Bordenstein, S.R., M.L. Marshall, A.J. Fry, U. Kim, and J.J. Wernegreen. (2006)
The tripartite associations between bacteriophage, Wolbachia, and arthropods. PLoS Pathogens 2(5):e43.
Link >>
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