The Josephine Bay Paul Center

The Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution was officially established at the Marine Biological Laboratory in 1996. It is made possible by a generous endowment from the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation which has had a philanthropic interest in the MBL for the past twenty years...(read more here.)

RESEARCH at the Center explores the evolution and interaction of genomes of diverse organisms that play significant roles in environmental biology and human health. Projects span all evolutionary time scales, from deep phylogenetic divergence of ancestral prokaryotic and eukaryotic lineages to ecological analyses of how members of diverse communities contribute and respond to environmental change.The Center also houses the Mobile Genetic Element Cluster, which includes MBL-affiliated year-round and summer investigators who are studying mobile DNA, and the Imaging Microbial Diversity Cluster, which includes Bay Paul Center and other MBL investigators who are developing new methods to visualize the diversity of microbes and their spatial relationship.

Recent Publications

Roux S, Paul BG, Bagby SC, Nayfach S, Allen MA, Attwood G, Cavicchioli R, Chistoserdova L, Gruninger RJ, Hallam SJ, Hernandez ME, Hess M, Liu WT, McAllister TA, O'Malley MA, Peng X, Rich VI, Saleska SR, Eloe-Fadrosh EA. Ecology and molecular targets of hypermutation in the global microbiome. Nat Commun 12, 3076 (2021). doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-23402-7. PMID: 34031405

Coker MO, Laue HE, Hoen AG, Hilliard M, Dade E, Li Z, Palys T, Morrison HG, Baker E, Karagas MR and Madan JC. Infant Feeding Alters the Longitudinal Impact of Birth Mode on the Development of the Gut Microbiota in the First Year of Life. Front. Microbiol. 07 April 2021; 12:642197. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.642197

Klasek SA, Brock MT, Morrison HG, Weinig C and Maignien L. Soil Microsite Outweighs Cultivar Genotype Contribution to Brassica Rhizobacterial Community Structure. Front. Microbiol. 07 April 2021; 12:645784. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.645784

Pieper C, Magalhães Loureiro C, Law KL, Amaral-Zettler LA, Quintino V, Rodrigues AM, Ventura MA, Martins A. Marine litter footprint in the Azores Islands: A climatological perspective. Sci Total Environ. 2021 Mar 20;761:143310. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143310. Epub 2020 Nov 4. PMID: 33183812.

Schön I, Rodriguez F, Dunn M, Martens K, Shribak M, Arkhipova IR. A Survey of Transposon Landscapes in the Putative Ancient Asexual Ostracod Darwinula stevensoni. Genes (Basel). 2021 Mar 11;12(3):401. doi: 10.3390/genes12030401. PMID: 33799706; PMCID: PMC7998251.

Nowell RW, Wilson CG, Almeida P, Schiffer PH, Fontaneto D, Becks L, Rodriguez F, Arkhipova IR, Barraclough TG. Evolutionary dynamics of transposable elements in bdelloid rotifers. Elife. 2021 Feb 5;10:e63194. doi: 10.7554/eLife.63194. PMID: 33543711; PMCID: PMC7943196.

Moyle MW, Barnes KM, Kuchroo M, Gonopolskiy A, Duncan LH, Sengupta T, Shao L. Guo M, Santella A, Christensen R, Kumar A, Wu Y, Moon KR, Wolf G, Krishnaswamy S, Bao Z, Shroff H, Mohler W, Colón-Ramos DA. Structural and developmental principles of neuropil assembly in C. elegans. Nature. 2021 Mar;591(7848):99-104. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-03169-5. Epub 2021 Feb 24. PMID: 33627875.

Gribble KE. Brachionus rotifers as a model for investigating dietary and metabolic regulators of aging. Nutr Healthy Aging. 2021 Jan 20;6(1):1-15. doi: 10.3233/NHA-200104. PMID: 33709041; PMCID: PMC7903245.

Eren AM, Kiefl E, Shaiber A, Veseli I, Miller SE, Schechter MS, Fink I, Pan JN, Yousef M, Fogarty EC, Trigodet F, Watson AR, Esen ÖC, Moore RM, Clayssen Q, Lee MD, Kivenson V, Graham ED, Merrill BD, Karkman A, Blankenberg D, Eppley JM, Sjödin A, Scott JJ, Vázquez-Campos X, McKay LJ, McDaniel EA, Stevens SLR, Anderson RE, Fuessel J, Fernandez-Guerra A, Maignien L, Delmont TO, Willis AD. Community-led, integrated, reproducible multi-omics with anvi'o. Nat Microbiol. 2021 Jan;6(1):3-6. doi: 10.1038/s41564-020-00834-3. PMID: 33349678.

Vogel FA, Schlundt C, Stote RE, Ratto JA, Amaral-Zettler LA. Comparative Genomics of Marine Bacteria from a Historically Defined Plastic Biodegradation Consortium with the Capacity to Biodegrade Polyhydroxyalkanoates. Microorganisms. 2021 Jan 16;9(1):186. doi: 10.3390/microorganisms9010186. PMID: 33467086; PMCID: PMC7830162.

Zhao S, Zettler ER, Amaral-Zettler LA, Mincer TJ. Microbial carrying capacity and carbon biomass of plastic marine debris. ISME J. 2021 Jan;15(1):67-77. doi: 10.1038/s41396-020-00756-2. Epub 2020 Sep 2. PMID: 32879460; PMCID: PMC7852875.