The Microbiome Manipulation Lab
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Terrence H. Bell, Assistant Professor
Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology​
​The Pennsylvania State University
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The microbiome is the collection of all microorganisms that inhabit an environment.  

Our lab applies a variety of techniques, including high-throughput sequencing approaches, to understand how the manipulation of environmental microbiomes affects soil function and plant growth.

In particular, we are interested in:
  • The impacts of unintentional human modification of microbiomes on the function of agricultural and ecological systems.
  • The extent to which microbiomes can be purposefully modified in different biotic and abiotic contexts.
  • Competition between complex microbial assemblages. 
​Recent News
February 2021: Former lab member Rondy Malik was honored as a Rising Star on Cell Mentor's list of '1,000 Inspiring Black Scientists in America'. Congratulations Rondy!
February 2021:
Caylon's first article published in Plant and Soil, through a great collaboration with the labs of Michela Centinari and Dave Eissenstat. Congratulations Caylon!
January 2021: Nice article in Lancaster Farming on a talk given by Laura, Adrian Galbraith-Paul, and me at the annual Pasa Sustainable Agriculture Conference. See here!
January 2021: Nice interview with TRaCE McGill, which let me talk about my professional journey. Thanks to Dongyun for the invitation!
December 2020: Caylon was just awarded a College of Ag Competitive Grant.  Congratulations Caylon!
November 2020: Laura successfully passed her Comprehensive Exam. Congratulations Laura!
November 2020: New paper with Thomas Bell in FEMS Microbiology Ecology. Not sure whether Google Scholar will find this helpful or confusing!
November 2020: Laura has a new paper in Environmental Microbiology. Congratulations Laura!
November 2020: New episode of the Genome Insider Podcast with Alison Takemura is focused on our DG1 project with Mary Ann Bruns' lab. See here!
September 2020: Rondy's paper has been published in Biogeochemistry. Congratulations Rondy!
August 2020: Hiring for a research tech position, split 50:50 with Emily Davenport's lab. See the posting here.
August 2020: Great video about Caylon's work from the Huck Institutes! 
June 2020: Jeremy was just awarded a Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Fellowship through 2023. Congratulations Jeremy!
May 2020: We have received funding from the USDA AFRI Foundational Program to assess the importance of generalist microorganisms in agricultural systems.
April 2020: We are thrilled to welcome Sarah Richards as a new Ph.D. student in our group for Fall 2020! Sarah will be entering through the Ecology program, and comes to us from Indigo Ag and the University of New Hampshire. 
April 2020: Laura just received a P.E.O. Scholar Award.  Congratulations Laura!
April 2020: Ryan just accepted a Ph.D. position in Estelle Couradeau's lab at Penn State. Congratulations Ryan! 
March 2020: Caylon was just awarded a prestigious NSF GRFP award. Congratulations Caylon!
March 2020: We are really excited to announce the arrival of our first postdoc, William King.  William comes to us from the University of Technology Sydney, and brings experience in molecular biology, biotechnology, and microbiology. Welcome William!
February 2020: At our lab party, we came up with some more useful words for the science community. When your paper is stuck in an endless cycle of revisions, you are in papergatory. And when a talk promises to be very exciting, but actually has little to do with what you care about, it was powerpointless.
February 2020: Helen Senerchia has just joined our lab as an undergraduate research assistant. Welcome Helen! 
February 2020: Laura's article on microbiome transfer and our white paper from the Wild and Tamed Phytobiomes Symposium were both among the 10 most downloaded articles in Phytobiomes for 2019.
January 2020:
Jeremy passed the qualifying exam for the Bioinformatics and Genomics Program. Congratulations Jeremy!
December 2019: Congratulations to Jeremy for winning the PSU Student Leader Scholarship!
December 2019: Congratulations to Caylon and Miranda for being selected for Sloan Research Fellowships!
December 2019: Enjoyed speaking at PASA's Advanced Farmer Gathering.  Great discussions about the role of soil microorganisms in agriculture.
November 2019: Congratulations Ryan! Ryan's article on sustained soil-to-soil contact for microbiome transfer is online now.
November 2019: Our Organic Transitions project is featured in Penn State News, alongside two other new projects from the College.
November 2019: Great 'Article-in-a-Day' retreat at Shaver's Creek!  Thanks to Suzanne Fleishman and Sarah Isbell for contributing to this lab project.

See older news in the news archive.

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