News

Summer updates to the Amend lab

It was a busy spring! We’re so happy to welcome new postdocs Jason Baer and Jiho Yang to the lab. A huge congratulations to Rayne who completed her UROP project with aplomb! and graduated with her BS. Rayne is sticking around to lend a hand on yeast projects. Daehlin got funding to work for the summer in the tissue lab at Lyon Arboretum where sheʻs developing protocols for sterile cultivation of Halophila hawaiiana, our endemic sea grass. Weʻre hoping to have her back by fall. Tim Berger visited our lab for a whirlwind visit where he advanced some of the chemistry work on plastic degradation while racking up adventures around Hawaii. Finally, we got to host Jeff Stallman and Daniel Raudabaugh from Purdue, who helped us sample and isolate yeasts from around some of the cooler spots on Oahu.

Plastic Degradation Paper Published and on Radio

Check out the paper published in Mycologia, and Ronja’s interview on HPR:

Steinbach, R. M., Whitner, S., & Amend, A. S. (2025). Marine fungi degrade plastic and can be conditioned to do it faster. Mycologia, 117(1), 1-8.

Postdoc and Student Opportunities

Weʻre recruiting 3 postdoctoral researchers to work on projects funded by the National Science Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, two are focused on the diversity, evolution and ecology of Basidiomycete yeasts in Hawaiʻi, and the second is focused on examining the roles of microbiomes in experimental food webs. In all cases, the trainee would have substantial latitude to develop independent lines of inquiry tailored to their specific skillset and interests.

Salary for Postdocs is contingent on experience, but will exceed NIH guidelines. Initial appointment is for one year, with the possibility for renewal.

Potential applicants should contact Anthony Amend Amend@hawaii.edu with a cover letter, CV, and contact information for three references. 

Project 1: Phylogenomics of Pucciniomycotina Yeasts in divergent Hawaiian habitats. 

The main goals of this project are to 1) develop novel and high-throughput isolation strategies to characterize novel yeast diversity from divergent and unusual Hawaiian habitats, 2) examine yeasts in animal guts, and the potential for co-cladogenesis between yeasts and hosts, 3) leverage the environmental heterogeneity of Hawaiian climates to understand the evolution of yeast environmental specificity/generalism, and larger global diversity patterns.

Yeast mutualisms play critical and documented roles in conservation of Hawaiian plants and animals, and there is the opportunity for project personnel to develop conservation research pursuits leveraging yeast systems. We also have ongoing research into yeast degradation of plastics. There are three years of funding for a graduate student, and up to three years of funding for a Postdoc on this project. Graduate students would likely apply via the Botany Department at UHM https://manoa.hawaii.edu/lifesciences/graduate/

• Genomics, phylogenomics, excellent sterile technique, and facility with macro-ecological and biogeographic analyses will be useful for personnel on this project.

Start date for the Postdoc is January 2025, with some flexibility pending circumstances.

Start date for the graduate student is Fall 2025.

Project 2: Developing a marine fungal model system focused on the Basidiomycete yeast Malassezia.

This fungus is frequently detected in marine fungal datasets, and may play a critical role in marine fungal C cycling. Attempts to further understand the ecology and evolution of this yeast have been hindered by the difficulty involved in its cultivation.  The Postdoc on this project will leverage existing visualization and molecular tools to develop novel cultivation and metagenomic strategies to better understand the functional role of this yeast. This postdoc is part of a large collaborative project, and will have the opportunity for extended stays colleagues in Woods Hole, Duke, University of Michigan, and/or University of Washington to participate in training and research activities.  The postdoc will be able to make use of our marine lab, research cruise infrastructure, and global collaboration network to contribute to other pressing questions in marine fungal biology. There are two years of funding for a Postdoc on this project.

• Comparative genomics, fluorescence microscopy, experience isolating fastidious micro-organisms, and microfluidics-engineering/fabrication will serve this researcher well.  

Project 3: Mechanisms of microbial community influence on food web efficiency.

Food webs determine the organization and interaction of life in all terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Within food chains, energy is transferred among trophic levels from producers to apex predators in a largely unidirectional and energy-inefficient manner, such that ~90% of available energy is lost to entropy between any two levels. Our earlier work showed that host microbiomes are shaped by food chain hierarchies in a well-studied Hawaiian watershed, and based on these results we developed a simple model food web experimental system based on tank bromeliads in which we have axenic cultures and genomes for mosquito hosts and their microbial symbionts. The postdoc on this project will leverage these tools to understand the genomic/genetic mechanisms underlying microbial constraints on food web efficiency.

• A foundation in genomics, genetics, food web ecology, and microbial community analysis will be important on this project. Familiarity with insects and insect mutualisms would be a bonus.

Start date for the Postdoc is early 2025, with some flexibility pending circumstances.

Summer 2024 Updates!!

So many good things to report!

Let’s start with people… Aloha oe to Bryson and Giullia! And welcome to Postdoc Samira, a recent emigre from the Aime lab at Perdue, and Rayne (who survived our Mycology class this spring), excited to have you both around to help with Bromeliad food web work!

Syrena Whitner is *KILLING* it and received both the MSA Climate Change award AND a travel award to present at IMC in Maastricht.

We had a phenomenal time in Asilomar at the 2nd occasional marine fungi meeting. Having not been to a conference since 2019, it was so great to see familiar faces and catch up on great science. Stay tuned for updates and initiatives from CA.

Lots of fun(gal) updates!

So, it’s been a minute since we’ve updated the website… here’s what you missed.

Big e komo mai to Quinn Moon, Giulia Marenco Di Moriondo, and Reese Tsubota who have stepped in to help with culturing and with our phytoplankton pathogen studies.  Glad you’re here!

Ronja received funding to present at SACNAS in Puerto Rico later this month, depending on the recovery situation there.

Syrena got funding for and presented at the Gordon Conference on Marine Microbes in Switzerland!  

Anthony took a new position in the Pacific Biosciences Research Center, a unit within the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.  The biggest change is that has assumed leadership of the Integrated Center of Environmental Microbiomes and Human Health, a Center of Biomedical Excellence funded by the NIH.  

In funding news, NSF gave the thumbs up on our Rules of Life proposal to study the role of Microbes in food web efficiency and complexity.  This 5 year grant is in collaboration with Nicole Hynson, Peter Sadowski and Matt Medeiros, and will use experimental microcosms to gain a mechanistic understanding of microbial roles in food webs.  We’ve started characterizing Bromeliad invertebrate and microbial communities to build up our understanding of this simple food web. Stay tuned for more on this.

Oh, yeah, we published a bunch of papers, check it out:

Amend, A. S., Swift, S. O., Darcy, J. L., Belcaid, M., Nelson, C. E., Buchanan, J., … & Hynson, N. A. (2022). A ridge-to-reef ecosystem microbial census reveals environmental reservoirs for animal and plant microbiomes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(33), e2204146119.

Read more about this here

Darcy, J. L., Amend, A. S., Swift, S. O., Sommers, P. S., & Lozupone, C. A. (2022). specificity: an R package for analysis of feature specificity to environmental and higher dimensional variables, applied to microbiome species data. Environmental microbiome, 17(1), 1-12.

Tipton, L., Zahn, G. L., Darcy, J. L., Amend, A. S., & Hynson, N. A. (2022). Hawaiian fungal amplicon sequence variants reveal otherwise hidden biogeography. Microbial ecology, 83(1), 48-57.

Boekhout, T., Amend, A. S., El Baidouri, F., Gabaldón, T., Geml, J., Mittelbach, M., … & Yurkov, A. (2021). Trends in yeast diversity discovery. Fungal Diversity, 1-47.