Megan Behringer

New Preprint 🚨: Led by Ph.D student, Ashlynn Bruder, we explore how feast/famine cycles in our LTRS system influence temporal selection on new mutations. Reconstruction of mutations reveals environment-dependent epistasis + increased fitness during both feast and famine conditions. Summary Fig ⬇️

Gotta love my lab asking Dan Hartl to sign the lab copy of Hartl and Clark. Really glad I got to meet with him today, such an interesting to chat with!

It's happening! NYUGSM Microbiology is hiring and I'd love to see more bacteriology here! Please repost and spread the word!

Come be my colleague at Vanderbilt ⚓️! We have an Open-Rank Tenure Track search for a Theoretical Biologist in the Dept. Of Biological Sciences! Vandy BioSci is an awesome group of researchers with diverse interests. See Application Information Below ⬇️

“Bacterial growth is straightforward to measure, complex in origin and exquisitely sensitive to environmental and genetic perturbations.” Fantastic opening sentence to a deeply interesting topic. Never thought about bacterial growth like this before. #MicroSky #Bacteria

Today is the day! So excited to share with my colleagues a bit of what we accomplished!

New school year, new lab photo!!

Beautiful morning here in the mountains at the Function of Evolving Systems GRC.

Huge faculty recruitment effort at the University of Chicago -- a division-wide, open-rank search looking to hire about 20 faculty across 5 research areas in biology. Come be our colleague! Full announcement: uchicago.app.box.com/s/ckih9zv3rj...

We're hiring an ecologist at UC Berkeley! The Dept. of Integrative Biology is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Ecology. Plants/algae, invertebrates, microbes, or marine systems a priority. Come join us!! Apply by Oct 5, 2026. aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05489 PS: Please share!

Come be our colleague. I have been in this Division for 27 years (4 as a postdoc and 23 as a PI). It is an amazing place to work, collaborate, and be inspired. If you are applying to be an Assistant or Associate Professor this Fall, don't miss this deadline.

Cool Black Hawk helicopter landing outside our window today. #ViewFromTheLab

I talked about these papers #smbe2026. If you are interested in doing research (PhD or Postdoc) on this topic, get in touch! (if were there, sorry for the abrupt end; somehow timing got off) pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41763210/ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39146405/ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41699381/

Our lab is looking to hire a RA to contribute to experimental evolution studies on anaerobic & aerotolerant bacteria! This is a great opportunity for recent grads looking to gain experience before perusing graduate training. Info at this link: ecsr.fa.us2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Talks by: @christianlandry.bsky.social @nadavmishol.bsky.social Jia Zheng @rmuniztrejo.bsky.social Olivier Tenaillon Solomon McShea Yiqiao Sun @megbehri.bsky.social Florian Mattenberger @ariannebabina.bsky.social Aleksandra Nivina

#SMBE2026 S06: Synthetic and Systems Biology Approaches to Dissecting the Molecular Mechanisms of Evolution 🗓️ Mon Jun 29, 3:50pm 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme

She’s beautiful, let’s sequence her 😍🧬🧫

Comparative analysis of monocultures vs cocultures for >600 generations reveals that cross-feeding can limit the emergence of loss-of-function mutations. Congrats to Dr. Ying-Chih (Ella) Chuang and coauthors (@megbehri.bsky.social +others)! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and how organized sports prepares you academic science. Sports instill key skills like coachability, practicing on your own time, rebounding from failure, pushing yourself to keep improving, & knowing that results take time and consistent effort.

Yes! Let’s go! All aboard the microbial epigenetics train! 🚂

Why does antibiotic resistance evolution vary between patients? Come to @officialuom.bsky.social @mermanchester.bsky.social to help us find out! 2.5 year @wellcometrust.bsky.social postdoc position in experimental evolution Closing 15 May. Apply here: www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Every young genome biologist around 2007 knew just how influential and complicated Craig Venter was. Learning about the human genome, and yacht expeditions collecting ocean microbiomes, were major contributors to my interest in bioinformatics when I was an undergrad finding my way in science. RIP.

The feeling when you get reviews back on your manuscript and the comments from all three reviewers are extremely thorough, constructive, and highly actionable.

In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨 Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!) Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1093/fems...

Is it too much to ask to just have a freaking physician as surgeon general?!

The PopGen Vienna Seminar series schedule is ready for the next term (March-June). It's jam-packed with fantastic speakers in #evolution, #genetics, #genomics, #popgen, and more! Details and streaming link signup can be found on our website popgen-vienna.at/news/seminars/

There’s a new Ph.D. In the house! Congratulations Dr. Stone @starlcone.bsky.social ! First doctoral student from the Behringer Lab! Amazing presentation today on the bacterial methylome and longitudinal rbTnSeq. We’re immensely proud of him!

Excited to share this new Preprint from our lab led by PhD Candidate Carl Stone (defending Tuesday). Here we present a framework for longitudinal rbTn-Seq and apply it to the Microbial extended growth curve to resolve the fitness seascape through growth, death, and long-term stationary phase!

We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT

Historical contingency limits adaptive diversification in a spatially structured environment @evolletters.bsky.social from @megbehri.bsky.social academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

Now that we’re back, I want to promote this awesome work from our group led by former UG Researcher, Gillian Patton (now a Ph.D student at Wash U) published in Evol. Letters! We blocked a first step mutation that typically promotes biofilm formation to see how this roadblock influences evolution.

Attending the most important college football event of the year. #PopTartsBowl

Behringer Lab put a heck of a holiday door submission together with Skiing the Finess Slopes. Even has a little E. coli fishing for jackpot mutations! ⛷️ 🧫 🧬

This is a huge honor and we’re so excited to get started on this new direction for our group stemming from the work of William McLaughlin, a Ph.D. Candidate in our lab! Major thanks to our scout, Paul Turner and Hypothesis Fund for seeing the potential in this project! Time to get to work! 🧬🧫🧪

Beautiful morning in the Smokies at SEPEEG 2025. Listening to Fisher’s geometric model, with coffee, in the mountain air, just hits different. 🏔️ ☕️

Our lab is hiring!! We are looking for a research assistant who will be involved with our experimental evolution studies on how stress affects population dynamics in E. coli. Great opportunity for recent grads! E-mail for more info and apply here: ecsr.fa.us2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Eis: machine learning to reverse-engineer #evolution. Brassington (@amandalea.bsky.social): Evolutionary mismatch. Rose: Genome-scale models. Bruder (@megbehri.bsky.social): Computational & experimental microbial evolution.

Really proud of Owen Hale, a Ph.D. Candidate in our group who was awarded the Gut Microbiome, Yogurt and Probiotic Fellowship by Danone North America. Owen’s research focuses on E. coli / Lactic Acid Bacteria interactions! www.prnewswire.com/news-release...

Microbial cross-feeding stabilized by segregation of a dependent mutant from its independent ancestor #ISMEJournal by @ofsheff.bsky.social et al from @jakemckinlay.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

An Anaerobic Pathogen Rewires Host Metabolism to Fuel Oxidative Growth in the Inflamed Gut https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.31.657111v1

Given that there are 435 voting members of Congress, I would have hoped for more than 25% of House members to support American innovation in science and technology. 112? That’s it? No one else wants answers?!?!

Very cool new work by @megbehri.bsky.social and William F. McLaughlin: Starvation drives co-existence in cross-feeding bacterial populations www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thanks for the Signal Boost, Ákos! We’re so happy to see our review discussing Rho as an evolutionary capacitor out in Transcription! It’s an exciting follow up to our recent research article & opens up a discussion of where we expect evolutionary capacitors to exist b/w the genotype/phenotype gap.