T. Bollenbach

Trace elements increase reproducibility of microbial growth

This study shows that adding trace elements to chemically defined media reduces variability in microbial growth experiments, supporting their routine use for more reproducible results.

Extreme diversity of phage amplification rates and phage-antibiotic interactions revealed by PHORCE

This paper introduces PHORCE, a method to quantify phage amplification rates and reveals wide variation in phage-antibiotic interactions across Escherichia coli phages.

Growth-mediated negative feedback shapes quantitative antibiotic response

This study shows that growth-mediated negative feedback shapes the shallow dose-response curve of trimethoprim in E. coli by upregulating its target gene, with implications for drug resistance evolution.

Building clone-consistent ecosystem models

This paper characterizes clone-consistent ecological models and demonstrates their application to microbial communities, showing how they can improve model validity and generality.

Minimal biophysical model of combined antibiotic action

This paper develops a minimal biophysical model to predict antibiotic interactions using bacterial growth laws and experimental validation of resistance gene effects.

Exploiting epistasis to perturb the evolution of antibiotic resistance

The paper identifies cellular functions that limit antibiotic resistance evolution by analyzing gene deletions in E. coli under controlled lab evolution.