Our research integrates evolutionary biology and microbiology, using bacteria and phage as study systems to address fundamental questions in both fields.
We study microbial evolution, a process that is a useful model for understanding natural evolution and underlies the applied biology of pathogenesis, environmental microbiology, and industrial fermentation.
Lab News:
[April 11, 2025] Our lab has four poster presentations at the Annual UWM Biological Sciences Research Symposium. Nice work to Harleen, Ally, Nery, and Grant!
[Mar 2025] Welcome to the lab, UWM Undergraduate Grant May!
[September 2024] Welcome to the lab, UWM Undergraduate Ally Ruffino!
[August 2024] We publish our first all-UWM paper in Microbiology! Congratulations to undergraduate researchers Harleen Tewatia and Chloé Skinner:
- Burmeister A.R. #, Tewatia H., and Skinner C. 2024. A Tradeoff Between Bacteriophage Resistance and Bacterial Motility is Mediated by the Rcs Phosphorelay in Escherichia coli. Microbiology 170(8). doi: 10.1099/mic.0.001491
[June 2024] We present our work at ASM Microbe's Experimental Evolution Symposium in Atlanta, GA
[May 2024] Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Harleen Tewatia, winner of the fantastic 2024-2025 UW-Milwaukee Senior Excellence in Research Award!
[April 27, 2024] Harleen and Chloé present their work at the Milwaukee-area Undergraduate Biological Research Conference.
[April 26, 2024] Harleen and Chloé present their work at the UW-Milwaukee Undergraduate Research Symposium.
[March 6, 2024] Chloé will present her undergraduate work on mucoidy to state lawmakers at the annual Wisconsin Research in the Rotunda event!
[January 2024] Welcome to new Ph.D. student Nery Zamudio Bautista!
[Nov. 11 2023] Chloé presents her undergraduate work on mucoidy at the Riveredge Nature Center Student Research Symposium.
[Oct. 26, 2023] We welcome phage P1 to the lab.
[June 5, 2023] We have two new phage genome announcements just published in Microbiology Resource Announcements. These represent the world-traveling, phage-collecting skills of collaborator Ben Chan and a team of dedicated undergrad bioinformaticians::
- Schwarz J.C., An W., Theroux A., Vargas L., Chan B.K., Turner P.E., and Burmeister A. R.# 2023. Complete genome assembly and annotation of Escherichia coli bacteriophage 55 from Rivière la Quint in Gonaïves, Haiti. Microbiology Resource Announcements e00107-23.
- Schwarz J.C., Chan B.K., Turner P.E., and Burmeister A. R.# 2023. Complete genome assembly and annotation of Escherichia coli bacteriophage 107. Microbiology Resource Announcements. e00106-23.
[May 16, 2023] First results from the Burmeister lab at UWM now published! This work characterizes our model phage U136B through experimental evolution, bridging work done by my great team from postdoc to UWM:
- Burmeister A.R.#, Tzintzun-Tapia E., Roush C., Mangal I., Barahman R., Bjornson R.D., and Turner P.E. 2023. Experimental evolution of the TolC-receptor phage U136B functionally identifies a tail fiber protein involved in adsorption through strong parallel adaptation. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Doi/10.1128/aem.00079-23.
[May 12, 2023] Congratulations again to lab member Chloé Skinner! Best Undergraduate Poster Award in Microbiology at the UW Milwaukee BioScience Symposium.
[May 5, 2023] Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Chloé Skinner, winner of the fantastic 2023-2024 Senior Excellence in Research Award!
[Apr. 28th, 2023] Undergraduates Harleen Tewatia and Chloé Skinner present their posters on phage resistance at the 15h Annual UW Milwaukee Undergraduate Research Symposium!
[Apr. 7th, 2023] Undergraduate Chloé Skinner presents her research on phage resistance at the UW Milwaukee BioScience Symposium.
[March 29th, 2023] The lab received our first peer-reviewed grant to study phage resistance and antibiotic resistance! Thank you to the UWM Discovery and Innovation Grant Program!
[Nov 2022] Back from giving a talk on our group's research in Manchester, UK at the Microbiology Society meeting on Understanding and Predicting Microbial Evolutionary Dynamics. Great to see so many fantastic talks and posters!
[Sept 2022] Congratulations to Harleen Tewatia and Chloé Skinner, recipients of UWM Undergraduate Research SURF Awards and new Burmeister lab researchers!
[August 2022] The new lab is open at UW Milwaukee!
[June 2022] Presenting work on phage experimental evolution at the American Society for Microbiology Microbe conference in Washington, DC.
[May 2022] Organizing and running two Microbial Evolution workshops at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany! Info here.
[Jan. 14, 2021] Excited to announce I’m joining the Department of Biological Sciences at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee as an Assistant Professor this August! So happy to move back home to SE Wisconsin and set up lab in Milwaukee to study how phage resistance impacts antibiotic resistance and other evolutionary curiosities. Looking for great undergraduate, postbac, graduate, and postdoc researchers!
[Sept. 22, 2021] Submitted! New phage genome on GenBank and manuscript submitted with my 12 summer undergraduate researchers.
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