University of Wisconsin–Madison

Tag: microbial observatory

Lake Loop: Bacteria in Lake Mendota Repeat A Cycle of Evolution Year After Year

Like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, bacteria species in a Wisconsin lake are in a kind of endless loop that they can’t seem to shake. Except in this case, it’s more like Groundhog Year. According to a new study in Nature Microbiology, researchers found that through the course of a year, most individual …

Off The Reel: A “Bog Baptism” with Kaela

by Riley Steinbrenner Her first day on the job, I found my housemate Kaela Amundson—a microbiology undergraduate at UW-Madison—hunched over a blacktop counter in the station’s main lab next to a cranking, electric-mixer-sized machine that sounded like it belonged in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. But it definitely wasn’t producing any everlasting gobstoppers. With tweezers in …