News

bioRxiv preprint
13 November 2025

New preprint on bioRxiv! Jess Warren & co show that the mealybug mitochondrial genome encodes the normal number of tRNAs, but that two of them are hidden as perfect reverse complements of two different tRNAs, so that 4 tRNAs are encoded from only two loci!

Arkadiy Garber PhD defense
3 November 2025

Congratulations to Arkadiy Garber on successfully defending his PhD thesis! Arkadiy is now working as a bioinformatician at the company he started, Middle Author Bioinformatics.

Bacterial phylogenetic tree
16 April 2024

New review from the lab! Jess, Arkadiy, Noah, and I all worked together on a review on how bacterial endosymbionts with very few genes might work. It was a super fun group effort. The review was part of a special issue in PLoS Biology called Symbiosis across the tree of life.

2022

  • 14 September 2022: I did the Ask A Biologist Podcast! We talked about cicadas, and it was fun. Aimed at middle school students, but hopefully it's not painful for older folks.

2021

  • 27 September 2021: We are searching for a BS/MS-level entomologist for the lab! This would be ideal for someone who recently graduated and wants a year or two of research experience before graduate school, but for the right person it could be a longer-term job.
  • 23 September 2021: Holy moly, I/John was selected to be an HHMI Investigator! Even though I've known for almost three months, I still really don't fully believe it. But HHMI made the announcement today, so I guess it's real.
  • 5 May 2021: Delighted to have Ed Yong highlight our cicada work in the Atlantic! Cicada endosymbiont evolution is just about the most complicated thing we work on ... I/John feel like I need 30 minutes in a professional seminar just to introduce the system. Here Ed discusses over a decade of cicada work with a compelling narrative, accuracy, clarity, and humor. In a seven-minute read. I wish I could do that.
  • 5 February 2021: After a busy summer (and fall!) moving, getting settled, and getting the lab up and running, we are so excited to have our first preprint of 2021! Led by first year PhD student Arkadiy Garber, we describe the cellular location and genome evolutionary patterns in two gammaproteobacteria, both of which live inside another bacterium, Tremblaya, which lives inside of special insect cells. See the preprint on bioRxiv.

2020

  • 22 April 2020: The lab is moving to the Center for Mechanisms of Evolution at Arizona State University this summer! We will be hiring, so if you are interested in graduate school or in doing a post-doc in the lab, please get in touch with John.
  • 24 February 2020: Not really a publication, but I/John did a Q&A with Current Biology and this is what happened. It was sort of fun, thanks to CB for asking.

2019

  • 13 October 2019: During his forays into Chile and Argentina for cicada field work (mostly trying to understand endosymbiont evolution), Piotr noticed a potentially unusual cicada whose phylogenetic patterns didn't make much sense. Turns out that it is a brand new (and possibly the only) member of a fifth cicada subfamily! Chris Simon and colleagues added a ton more data to this finding, and made it into a great paper.
  • 3 October 2019: Led by DeAnna, our work showing that the crazy patchwork of endosymbiont genes, native host genes, and host genes resulting from bacteria-to-insect HGT is functional and produces a peptidoglycan layer exclusively at the Moranella periphery has been published in Cell! This was a long time coming, and would not have been possible without our amazing collaborators at Caltech, NIH Rocky Mountain Labs, and Sheffield. Many thanks to Viviane Callier at Quanta Magazine and Ruth Williams at The Scientist for their terrific stories covering our work!
  • 18 June 2019: Led by JT Van Leuven, our work showing that endosymbiont tRNAs are correctly processed at their 5' and 3' ends (despite not encoding all of the tRNA processing machinery on their genomes) was published at mBio!
  • 3 June 2019: Colin Dale, Bret Boyd, and I wrote a review on bacterial endosymbionts as they go through the processes of birth, aging, and then (sometimes) death, and it was just published in Current Biology! This was a super fun review to write: Colin thinks a lot about symbiont birth, and I (John) think a lot about symbiont old age and death. It was cool to try and merge our ideas.
  • 4 April 2019: John went on Hank Green's SciShow Talk Show and had a blast talking about cicadas. He also did a terrible job handling some crabs.
  • 3 April 2019: Tom Richards and John wrote a Nature News & Views about a super cool new paper from Patrick Keeling's lab that describes a very unusual new symbiont in corals.

2018

  • 13 November 2018: Led by Matt and Piotr, our paper on the specific cell biological adaptations that cicadas make to changing endosymbiont genome complexity is now out in mBio!
  • 23 June 2018: Matt and Piotr lead a cool project where we studied how exactly cicadas deal with increases in endosymbiont complexity. Read the preprint at bioRxiv!
  • 11 June 2018: Piotr, Dan, and I were lucky to be part of a collaboration with Yu Matsuura, Takema Fukatsu, and colleagues showing that Hodgkinia has been replaced by Ophiocordyceps fungi in many Japanese cicadas. Read the paper and check out the highlight at the Atlantic by Ed Yong!
  • 27 December 2017: Congrats to Piotr on the publication of his paper on the multiple origins of lineage splitting in symbionts in Chilean cicadas!
  • 27 November 2017: Congrats to Filip on the publication of his review on functional horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to eukaryotes in Nature Reviews Microbiology!
  • 9 November 2017: Congrats to Matt on the publication of his paper describing the genome evolution of symbionts in periodical cicadas in Current Biology!
  • 8 November 2017: Tim, Dan, and I helped make a movie on our lichen work with Toby and colleagues last year. The film was the winner of the inaugural International Wildlife Film Festival film lab, was a finalist at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, and was featured in National Geographic's Short Film Showcase.
  • 31 October 2017: Congrats to Dan on the publication of his paper describing the genomics and evolution of ambrosia beetle fungal symbionts in Molecular Ecology!

2016

  • 30 August 2016: Many thanks to Ed Yong of the Atlantic for his terrific story about our recent PNAS paper.
  • 29 August 2016: Our work showing multiple endosymbiont replacements in the inter-bacterial symbionts of mealybugs has been published in PNAS! Congratulations to Filip Husnik!
  • 22 July 2016: Many thanks to Ed Yong of the Atlantic, Steph Yin of the New York Times, Rachel Feltman of the Washington Post, Emily Chung of the CBC, Liz Pennisi of Science, Christopher Intagliata and Jennifer Frazer of Scientific American, Maddie Stone of Gizmodo, and Susan Milius at Science News for covering our recent lichen paper.
  • 21 July 2016: Led by Toby Spribille, our paper on the discovery of basidiomycete yeasts in macrolichens was published in Science.

2015

  • 16 September 2015: Congratulations to Piotr, who was just awarded a National Geographic grant to expand our work on the cicadas of Chile and Argentina!
  • 18 August 2015: John Carey has written a really interesting news piece on endosymbiosis and organelles in the latest issue of PNAS.
  • 18 August 2015: With Patrick Keeling and Ford Doolittle, our overview of the Sackler Colloquium, "Symbiosis becoming permanent," was just published in PNAS.
  • 12 August 2015: Led by Gordon Bennett, and in collaboration with Nancy Moran, our paper on the evolution of Baumannia in different sharpshooters was just published in GBE.
  • 11 August 2015: Congratulations to Stephanie Ray Weldon, recent recipient of a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship!
  • 18 May 2015: Many thanks to Ed Yong for his terrific National Geographic piece on our recent PNAS paper.
  • 18 May 2015: Our work on the crazy 'Hodgkinia genome complex' found in periodical cicadas was just published in PNAS.
  • 16 April 2015: Congratulations to Piotr on his recent Ecological, Evolutionary and Conservation Genomics Award from the AGA!
  • 26 January 2015: JT's DDIG was just recommended for funding! Congratulations JT!

2014

  • 31 October 2014: Science just published a story in the "In Depth" section of the magazine on the recent Sackler Colloquium that was organized by Patrick Keeling, Ford Doolittle, and me.
  • 6 October 2014: Led by PI Frank Rosenzweig, the University of Montana is one of seven institutions that were just named as new members of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI).
  • 3 October 2014: Led by Gordon Bennett and Nancy Moran, our paper describing the different ways in which one symbiont has co-evolved with another in different species of insects has just been published in mBio.
  • 15 September 2014: Many thanks to Liz Pennisi for her blurb in Science on our recent Cell paper!
  • 11 September 2014: We've welcomed two new people to the lab: Piotr Lukasik and Filip Husnik!
  • 28 August 2014: Many thanks to Ed Yong for covering our recent Cell paper on his blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science.
  • 28 August 2014: Our paper describing a very unusual sympatric speciation event in a cicada endosymbiont has just been published at Cell.
  • 24 July 2014: Patrick Keeling and I wrote a Dispatch for Current Biology highlighting a super cool new paper from Atsushi Nakabachi and colleagues.
  • 17 July 2014: Together with Ford Doolittle and Patrick Keeling, I am co-organizing a Sackler colloquium called, "Symbioses becoming permanent: The origins and evolutionary trajectories of organelles."
  • 26 March 2014: Our paper from last year describing the complicated history of HGT in a mealybug was highlighted at the ASM blog Small Things Considered.
  • 20 February 2014: Led by Rebecca Duncan and Alex Wilson at Miami, our collaborative work on the evolution of amino acid transporters in sap-feeding insects was just published in Molecular Ecology.

2013

  • 23 August 2013: Another great piece from Carl Zimmer on a cool new GBE paper from Gordon Bennett and Nancy Moran describing the new record holder for the smallest bacterial genome.
  • 8 August 2013: Congratulations to Filip Husnik, who has been awarded a fellowship from the Fulbright Foreign Student Program!
  • 5 August 2013: My Dispatch on a cool new paper from Atsushi Nakabachi and colleagues has just been published in Current Biology.
  • July 2013: Our recent Cell paper has been highlighted by Nicole Gerardo in Cell Host & Microbe and at Nature Reviews Microbiology.
  • 11 July 2013: Our paper on the population genomics of recently introduced invasive species was just published in Molecular Ecology.
  • 4 July 2013: Our recent Cell paper has been highlighted in the New York Times. Thanks to Carl Zimmer for his interest in our work.
  • 1 July 2013: The lab welcomes two new members: Matt Campbell as a new OBE graduate student, and Mariah Meyer as a UM undergrad research assistant.
  • 25 June 2013: Our recent Cell paper has been highlighted at National Geographic, the LA Times, and Simon Science News.
  • 20 June 2013: Our paper describing extensive bacteria-to-insect HGT in mealybugs was just published in Cell!
  • 8 April 2013: Dan was just awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Congrats Dan!
  • 1 January 2013: Our work on cicada endosymbionts has been funded by a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation.

2012

  • 6 December 2012: Toby's proposal on lichen genomics was funded by the Austrian Science Foundation.
  • 1 October 2012: Toby has had three papers published in the last few months, including one in Molecular Ecology.
  • 27 September 2012: John was just appointed an Associate Member of the CIFAR Program in Integrated Microbial Biodiversity.
  • 27 August 2012: Dan Vanderpool joins the lab as a PhD student. Welcome, Dan!
  • 14 June 2012: Two new NSF-REU supported summer students arrive: Welcome Emily (UM) and Dionna (Northeastern U).
  • 6 June 2012: The lab welcomes Russ Meister (UConn) for a short stay this summer to work on cicada symbionts.
  • 14 February 2012: Kelly Nelson was awarded an HHMI-MILES research fellowship for 2012.
  • 1 January 2012: Our review on small genomes was just published in Nature Reviews Microbiology.

2011

  • 2 December 2011: Toby Spribille joins the lab as a postdoctoral fellow.
  • 23 November 2011: Our paper on the surprising AT mutational bias in Hodgkinia has just been published at Genome Biology and Evolution.
  • 2 October 2011: Our Current Biology paper on the mealybug symbionts has been highlighted in Science, Nature, Scientific American, io9, and Small Things Considered.