Kaitlyn E. Ho

This paper identifies free-living Bradyrhizobium as the ancestral state of nitrogen fixation, showing that symbiotic nitrogen fixation evolved multiple times independently from free-living ancestors.

This paper identifies a probiotic bacterium with persistent colonization in corals using evolutionary genomic markers, showing improved thermal tolerance and survival during bleaching.

The paper investigates genome reduction in marine bacterioplankton, finding that neutral processes like genetic drift, not streamlining selection, drive genome size reduction in the Roseobacter group.