Dr. Brown’s Lab at Texas Tech University focuses on host-associated microbes — especially beneficial microbes — to understand genomic, evolutionary, ecological, and functional traits that stabilize these associations. We focus on omics and bioinformatics approaches. Host systems include insects, nematodes, plants, and other hosts. See what our exciting team of award-winning students is doing!
In 2021, Dr. Brown received a NSF CAREER Award jointly funded by the USDA, titled “CAREER: Discovering hidden drivers of rhizosphere symbiosis and parasitism” to study how endosymbionts such as Wolbachia and Cardinium impact plant-parasitic nematodes. In 2021 she also received a USDA Higher Education grant “Advanced Multidisciplinary Training in Agricultural Microbiome Science“.
Note: Our lab is now completely full. We are not accepting new grad students through 2022-2023.
2022 Weyandt N, Aghdam SA, Brown AMV. Discovery of early-branching Wolbachia reveals functional enrichment on horizontally transferred genes. Frontiers in Microbiology [In Press]
2021 Hill BM, Bisht K, Atkins GR, Gomez AA, Rumbaugh KP, Wakeman CA, Brown AMV. Lysis-Hi-C as a method to study polymicrobial communities and eDNA. Molecular Ecology Resources 2021:00,1-14.
2021 Salazar MM, Pupo MT, Brown AMV. Co-occurrence of viruses, plant pathogens, and symbionts in an underexplored hemipteran clade. Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology 11:715998.
2021 Ivanova M, Oh B, Khan IUH, Nightingale K, Bugarel M, Brown AMV, Loneragan GH. Draft Genome Assemblies of TwoCampylobacter novaezeelandiae and Four Unclassified Thermophilic Campylobacter Isolates from Canadian Agricultural Surface Water. Microbiology Resource Announcements 10(17): e00249-21.
2021 Aghdam SA, Brown AMV. Deep learning approaches for natural product discovery from plant endophytic microbiomes. Environmental Microbiome 16:6.
2021 Myers KN, Conn D, Brown AMV. Essential amino acid enrichment and positive selection highlight endosymbiont’s role in a global virus-vectoring pest. mSystems 6: e01048-20.
2019 Wasala SK, Brown AMV, Kang J, Howe DK, Peetz AB, Zasada IA, Denver DR. Variable abundance and distribution of Wolbachia and Cardinium endosymbionts in plant-parasitic nematode field populations. Frontiers in Microbiology 10:964.
2018 Howe DK, Smith M, Tom D, Brown AMV, Peetz AB, Zasada IA, Denver DR. Analysis of nematode-endosymbiont coevolution in the Xiphinema americanum species complex using molecular markers of variable evolutionary rates. Nematology 21(5): 533–546.
2018 Brown AMV, Wasala SK, Howe DK, Peetz AB, Zasada IA, Denver DR. Comparative genomics of Wolbachia–Cardinium dual endosymbiosis in a plant-parasitic nematode. Frontiers in Microbiology 9:2482.
2018 Brown AMV. Endosymbionts of plant-parasitic nematodes. Annual Review of Phytopathology 56:225-242.
2017 Phillips WS, Howe DK, Brown AMV, Eves-van Den Akker S, Dettwyler L, Peetz AB, Denver DR, Zasada IA. The draft genome of Globodera ellingtonae. Journal of Nematology 42(2):127-128.
2016 Brown AMV, Wasala SK, Howe DK, Peetz AB, Zasada IA, Denver DR. Genomic evidence for plant-parasitic nematodes as the earliest Wolbachia hosts. Scientific Reports 6: 34955.
2016 Phillips WS, Brown AMV, Howe DK, Peetz AB, Blok VC, Denver DR, Zasada IA. The mitochondrial genome of Globodera ellingtonae is composed of two circles with segregated gene content and differential copy numbers. BMC Genomics 17:706.
2016 Denver DR, Brown AMV, Howe DK, Peetz AB, Zasada IA. Genome skimming: a rapid approach to gaining diverse biological insights into multicellular pathogens. PLoS Pathogens 12(8): e1005713.
2015 Brown AMV, Howe DK, Peetz AB, Wasala SK, Zasada IA, Denver DR. Comparative genomics of an endosymbiont in a plant-parasitic nematode suggest a role in nutritional symbiosis. Genome Biology & Evolution 7(9):2727-2746.
2014 Brown AMV, Huynh LY, Bolender CM, Nelson KG, McCutcheon JP. Population genomics of a symbiont in the early stages of a pest invasion. (Invited original research article for Nature’s Microbiome). Molecular Ecology 23:1516-1530.
Breaking News:
April 2022 Newest publication from the Brown lab: Discovery of Early-Branching WolbachiaReveals Functional Enrichment on Horizontally Transferred Genes
March 2022 Great poster presentations by our lab members as the 14th TTU Undergraduate Research Conference: Liane Vásquez-Weber “Building a physiological gray-box computer model of the gut-brain-axis”, Sushim Mishra and Daniel Hsia “Molecular analysis of the effect of probiotics on cattle rumen methane emissions”, Kierra Hughes “Transcriptomics of microbiomes from salivary glands and gut of mosquitoes”, and Christina Kelley “Characterizing insect-bacterial symbiosis in membracids from the U.S. and Brazil” !
May 2020
February 2020
December 2019
November 2019
Proud of high school Clark Scholar Sydney Pittignano’s ESA talk on leafhopper endosymbiont genomics and HGTs. Great Job Sydney! #entsoc19 #EntSoc19
May 2019 Honoured to share the 2019 Outstanding Woman Leader (OWL) Award presented by The West Texas Association for Women in STEAM (WTAWIS) award with Professor Paola Prada!
April 2019 Well done Brianna, and Reagan & Nick on your excellent poster presentations at the 2019 TTU Undergraduate Research Symposium!
March 2019 Brown lab returns to Brazil for continued collaboration and research with Dr. Mônica Pupo. Special thanks to FAPESP and TTU SPRINT for supporting our membracid research!
February 2019. Congratulations to Brown Lab undergraduate researcher and CISER student Shrinidhi Joshi for winning the Dr. Richard L. Blanton Endowment for Undergraduate Research Scholarship and the Gary & Nancy Fish Medical Missions Scholarship! Well done, Nidhi!
October 2018. New Publications
April 2018. Congratulations again to Bravada! Great job on winning First Prize for Proposal Presentation at the Texas Tech Annual Biological Sciences Symposium.
March 2018. Congratulations to Bravada Hill, Brown lab Master’s student, for winning the Helen DeVitt Jones Graduate Fellowship!
March 2018. Congratulations to Brown lab undergraduate researchers Abigail Bell and Nick Weyandt for presenting their exciting research at the TTU Undergraduate Research Symposium!
October 2018. Congratulations to Brown lab undergraduate researcher Eric Murphy for presenting his mosquito-Zika virus work at The National Diversity in STEM Conferences (SACNAS) in Salt Lake, Utah!
August 2017. We proudly welcome new PhD student and Fulbright Award recipient Hendra Sihaloho to the lab!
August 2017. We are pleased to welcome new Master’s Student Bravada Hill to the lab!
March 2017. Congratulations to Brown lab researchers Colton Eaton and Gabrielle White for presenting their exciting banana microbiome research at the TTU Undergraduate Research Symposium!
Dr. Brown's Lab 