Department of Botany

College of Agriculture, Life Sciences, and Natural Resources

Education

1993-1997: Ph. D., The University of Warwick, United Kingdom
1992-1993: Bachelor of Science, Honours Class 1 in Microbiology, The University of Queensland, Australia
1989-1992: Bachelor of Science, The University of Queensland, Australia

Courses

MOLB4540/MICR4540/MOLB/ECOL5540 Microbial Diversity and Ecology

Research Emphasis

Microbial community structure and function; Interactions between microbes and their environment; Evolution of new function in microbial genomes

Currrent Research Projects

• Cell biology and evolutionary processes in planctomycetes and verrucomicrobia
• Characterization of novel pathogens and pathogenesis factors
• Algal-bacterial interactions
• Role of intestinal microbiota in pediatric gastrointestinal disorders

Selected Publications

von Mering, C., P. Hugenholtz,, J. Raes, S.G. Tringe, T. Doerks, L. J. Jensen, N. Ward, and P. Bork. 2007. Quantitative Phylogenetic Assessment of Microbial Communities in Diverse Environments. Science 315(5815):1126-30.

Wu D., A. Hartman, N. Ward, and J.A. Eisen. 2008. An Automated Phylogenetic Tree-Based Small Subunit rRNA Taxonomy and Alignment Pipeline (STAP). 2008. PLoS ONE 3(7): e2566.

Wu D., J. Raymond, M. Wu, S. Chatterji, Q. Ren, J.E. Graham, D.A. Bryant, F. Robb, A. Colman, L.J. Tallon, J.H. Badger, R. Madupu, N.L. Ward, and J.A. Eisen. 2009. Complete genome sequence of the aerobic CO-oxidizing thermophile Thermomicrobium roseum. PLoS ONE. 4(1):e4207. Epub 2009 Jan 16.

Ward, N.L., J.F. Challacombe, P.H. Janssen, B. Henrissat, P.M. Coutinho, M. Wu, G. Xie, D.H. Haft, M. Sait, J. Badger, R.D. Barabote,, B. Bradley, T.S. Brettin, L.M. Brinkac, D. Bruce, T. Creasy, S.C. Daugherty, T.M Davidsen, R.T. DeBoy, J.C. Detter, R.J. Dodson, A.S. Durkin, A. Ganapathy, M. Gwinn-Giglio, C.S. Han, H. Khouri, H. Kiss, S.P. Kothari, R. Madupu, K. Nelson, W.C. Nelson, I. Paulsen, K. Penn, Q. Ren, M.J. Rosovitz, J.D. Selengut, S. Shrivastava, S.A. Sullivan, R. Tapia, L.S. Thompson,  K.L. Watkins, Q. Yang, C. Yu, N. Zafar, L. Zhou, and C.R. Kuske. 2009. Three genomes from the Phylum Acidobacteria provide insight into the lifestyles of these microorganisms in soils. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 75(7): 2046-56.

Ward, N.L., B. Steven, K. Penn, B.A. Methé, and W.H. Detrich 3rd. 2009. Characterization of the intestinal microbiota of two Antarctic notothenioid fish species. Extremophiles. 13(4):679-85.Yang JC, Madupu R, Durkin AS, Ekborg NA, Pedamallu CS, Hostetler JB, Radune D,Toms BS, Henrissat B, Coutinho PM, Schwarz S, Field L, Trindade-Silva AE, Soares CA, Elshahawi S, Hanora A, Schmidt EW, Haygood MG, Posfai J, Benner J, Madinger C, Nove J, Anton B, Chaudhary K, Foster J, Holman A, Kumar S, Lessard PA, Luyten YA, Slatko B, Wood N, Wu B, Teplitski M, Mougous JD, Ward N, Eisen JA, Badger JH, Distel DL. 2009. The complete genome of Teredinibacter turnerae T7901: an intracellular endosymbiont of marine wood-boring bivalves (shipworms). PLoS ONE. 2009 Jul 1;4(7):e6085.

Kamneva, O.K., D.A. Liberles, and N.L. Ward. 2010. Genome-wide influence of indel substitutions on evolution of bacteria of the PVC super-phylum, revealed using a novel computational method. In press at Genome Biology and Evolution (Oxford University Press). Advance Access published November 3, 2010 doi:10.1093/gbe/evq071.