IBERS research featured on front cover of Environmental Microbiology

Cover image by Dr Chris Davey IBERS

Research by IBERS scientists is featured on the front cover of the January 2011 issue of Environmental Microbiology, a Wiley Journal with an Impact Factor of 4.909. The primary and corresponding author Dr Hazel Davey is a lecturer in IBERS and the co-author Dr Phil Hexley completed his PhD under Dr Davey’s supervision. The artist of the cover image, Dr Chris Davey, also works in IBERS as a mathematical modeller and computer programmer. The drawing depicts a budding yeast cell moving through a laser light beam in a flow cytometer and is inspired by Renaissance paintings. The paper describes a rapid method for monitoring cell physiology and shows that when cells are exposed to stress extensive but reversible membrane damage occurs in approximately 7% of the cells. These results indicate that the level of damage that the cell membrane can sustain and yet retain the ability to repair is greater than previously recognised which may have evolutionary implications via the facilitation of horizontal gene transfer.

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