Happy Postdoc Appreciation Week
Lab picnic in the botanical gardens on campus to celebrate our postdoc Anupama!
Our undergraduate Yesenia is featured in SDSU news with her continuing work on wild worms discovered in our Host-Bacterial Interactions Workshop! link here
Bacteria (Leucobacter celer, white arrow) causing worm star formation, leading to worm breakage and decapitation.
We are celebrating a great year for the lab, with one PhD and two Master’s students graduating, along with a series of great research discoveries made by everyone!
Celebrating at the famous Sacher Hotel over a Sacher torte!
Dalaena Rivera giving her talk on plasmids found in adhering microbiome bacteria.
Congrats Nik on your MS defense and finding a potential metabolic switch controlled by a virulence regulator in B. avium!
Tuan giving his thesis defense on Bordetella atropi infection mechanisms.
Tuan and Laura attending their PhD graduation and hooding.
President de la Torre, Dean Roberts, and AVP Madanat visit with the Luallen Lab.
President de la Torre looks at C. elegans under the microscope.
We had our first outreach for the Host-Bacteria Interactions Workshop this year! Undergrads Francis, Milan, Aysha, and Yesenia presented their research findings to sophomores, juniors, and seniors at Castle Park High School.
Thank you to Darci Kimball for letting us present to her students!
Dylan Matloub presenting his poster on natural variation in nematodes that allow for resistance to intracellular bacterial infection, likely thorough killing in the gut lumen.
Aaliyah Ringor presenting her poster on the discovery of potential adherence plasmids in microbiome bacteria that allow for gut colonization in C. elegans.
Super proud for all of our student presentations at the student research symposium! Congratulation to everyone!!!
Yesenia Rodrigues Reyes presenting her poster on new bacterial pathogens we found infecting worms isolated from the SDSU campus, as part of the Host-Bacterial Pathogens Workshop this year.
Jace Buxbaum presenting his poster on screening for suppressors of microbiome-colonization deficient mutants.
Super proud for all of our student presentations at the student research symposium! Congratulation to everyone!!!
The Luallen Lab is the first green lab on the SDSU campus! For more info, see: https://sustainable.sdsu.edu/get_involved/green_labs
Merry Worm Xmas!
Luallen Lab photo - post Holiday party
Students learn some C. elegans basics, like dauers, bagging, nictation, dumpys, rollers, and uncs.
Students learn about some of the cool bacteria we’ve found in wild nematodes
We had an amazing visit by two High Tech High Mesa junior high school classes! They all went sampling with the lab, including plating rotten substrates to look for C. elegans and other nematodes. They also watched a presentation from our Host-Bacteria Workshop alumni and took a tour of campus. Thanks to Meghan White and Ryan Urie for bringing their classes and helping organize the visit!
Group photo at the end of the visit
Sampling rotten pomegranates
Plating samples to lure the nematodes out for capture
Our second round of sampling. We found some weird pathogens from round 1, including a bacteria that may cause male worm heads to fall off. Workshop students are Yesenia Rodriguez Reyes, Milan Abdalla, Aysha Walker, and Francis Sarmiento (left to right).
Sampling group photo
Nancy Leon-Rivera and Anupama Singh sampling some rotten spotted leopard plant stems.
Nancy Leon-Rivera and Truc Nguyen sampling some rotting berries in front of GMCS.
Last day of the conference and we got a lovely picture with our close collaborator and my mentor Marie-Anne Felix! Now the lab will split up as everyone travels around the world for vacations. Thanks to Erin Osborne Nishimura for taking this picture of us!
Congratulations Dalaena for an Honorable Mention for your poster: Conjugative plasmids may be necessary for adherence of commensal-like bacteria to C. elegans intestinal epithelium.
