The human body is home to an extraordinary diversity of microbes, which are increasingly suggested to play pivotal roles in human health. Human microbiome sequencing projects have revealed intriguing correlations between specific patterns of microbial diversity and multiple aspects of host health. The establishment of microbial causal roles is gathering pace thanks to experimental manipulations, however the inter-cellular causal mechanisms frequently remain obscure.
The Brown lab is developing a framework to understand microbiome developmental biology – to understand when, where and how potential interactions come to be realized via demographic and regulatory interactions between expanding lineages of bacteria, and the consequences of these interactions for microbiome functioning in both health and in polymicrobial disease.
JD Davis, DV Olivença, SP Brown, EO Voit 2022. Methods of Quantifying Interactions among Populations using Lotka-Volterra Models. Frontiers in Systems Biology DOI 10.3389/fsysb.2022.1021897.
Wollein Waldetoft K, Sundius S, Kuske R, Brown SP. 2022. Defining the benefits of antibiotic resistance in commensals and the scope of resistance optimization. mBio. e01349-22
Varga JJ, Zhao CY, Davis JD, Hao Y, Farrell JM, Gurney JR, Voit E, Brown SP. Antibiotics drive expansion of rare pathogens in a chronic infection microbiome model. mSphere 7, e00318-22
C Zhao, Y Hao, Y Wang, J Varga, A Stecenko, J Goldberg, SP Brown. 2021. Microbiome data enhances predictive models of lung function in people with cystic fibrosis. J Infectious Diseases 223, S246-S256.
S Estrela, SP Brown. 2018. Community interactions and spatial structure shape selection on antibiotic resistant lineages. PLOS Computational Biology 14(6): e1006179
NV Lowery, L McNally, WC Ratcliff, SP Brown 2017. Division of labor, bet hedging, and the evolution of mixed biofilm investment strategies mBio.
L McNally, SP Brown. 2016. Microbiome: Ecology of stable gut communities. Nature Microbiology 1, 15016
A Stacy, L McNally, SE Darch, SP Brown, M Whiteley. 2016. The biogeography of polymicrobial infection. Nature Reviews Microbiology 14 (2), 93-105
McNally L, Brown SP* (2015) Building the microbiome in health and disease: niche construction and social conflict in bacteria. Phil Trans R Soc Lond B 370, e20140298
Single gene locus changes perturb complex microbial communities as much as apex predator loss. 2015. D McClean, L McNally, LI Salzberg, KM Devine, SP Brown, I Donohue. Nature communications 6, 8235-8235
Estrela S, Whiteley M, Brown SP. 2015. The demographic determinants of human microbiome health. Trends Microbiology 23, 134-141.
Estrela S, Brown SP (2013) Metabolic and demographic feedbacks shape the emergent spatial structure and function of microbial communities. PLOS Computational Biology 9, e1003398.
Estrela S, Trisos C, Brown SP (2012) From metabolism to ecology: cross-feeding interactions shape the balance between polymicrobial conflict and mutualism. American Naturalist 180, 566-576.
Rankin D, Rocha EPC, Brown SP* 2011. What genes are carried on mobile genetic elements, and why? Heredity 106 ,1-10.
Lysenko ES, Lijek RS, Brown SP & Weiser JN. 2010. Within-host competition drives selection for the capsule virulence determinant of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Current Biology
Brown SP, Inglis R, Taddei F. 2009. Evolutionary ecology of microbial wars: within-host competition and (incidental) virulence. Evolutionary Applications 2, 32-39.
Brown SP, Le Chat L, De Paepe M, Taddei F. 2006. Ecology of microbial invasions: amplification allows virus-carriers to invade more rapidly when rare. Current Biology, 16, 2048-2052.