Debbie Brock is a recent postdoctoral fellow who was first to discover that Dictyostelium discoideum has the ability to harvest bacteria within the sorus. She received her BS from University of Southern Mississippi in 1976 and her PhD from Rice University officially in May 2012. Upon graduating from college, she worked as a Research Assistant at one of the highest ranking cancer centers in the Unites States, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston TX, until 1991. She then took a position as a research assistant at Rice University in Richard Gomer’s lab working with Dictyostelium discoideum where she concentrated on genetic and biochemical factors that influenced group size. In 2005 she began working in the Strassmann/Queller lab, first as a researcher, then as a graduate student. Part of her Ph.D. thesis was published in Nature, entitled Primitive agriculture in a social amoeba. She is currently extending her study of symbiotic interactions between bacteria and D. discoideum and running the lab group.
Recent Awards
2010 NSF DEB-1011513 Evolutionary costs and benefits of a newly discovered symbiosis between the social amoeba Dictyostelium, and bacteria. Dissertation Improvement Grant 06/01/10-11/30/11, $15,000
2008-9 Edgar O’Rear Travel Award (2009 International Symbiosis Society Congress)
2008-9 Dean of Sciences Graduate Student Travel Award (2009 International Symbiosis Society Congress)
2008-9 EEB Dept. Graduate Student Travel Award (2009 International Symbiosis Society Congress)
Publications
- DiSalvo, S., Brock, D.A., smith, j., Queller, D.C., Strassmann, J.E. 2014. In the social amoeba, Dictyostelium discoideum, density, not farming status,
determines predatory success on unpalatable Escherichia coli, BMC Microbiology - Brock, D.A., Read, S., Bozhchenko, A., Queller, D.C., Strassmann, J.E. 2013. Social amoeba farmers carry defensive symbionts to protect and privatize their crops Nature Communications. doi:10.1038/ncomms3385
- Stallforth, P., Brock, D. A., Cantley, A. M., Tian, X., Queller, D.C., Strassmann, J.E. and Clardy, J. 2013. A bacterial symbiont is converted from an inedible producer of beneficial molecules into food by a single mutation in the gacA gene. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. doi:10.1073/pnas.1308199110
- Douglas, T. E., Brock, D. A., Adu-Oppong, B., Queller, D. C., & Strassmann, J. E. 2013. Collection and cultivation of dictyostelids from the wild. Book chapter in Methods in Molecular Biology, Dictyostelium discoideum Protocols Humana Press, Totowa, New Jersey, USA
- Brock, D.A., Douglas, T.E., Queller, D.C., Strassmann, J.E. Primitive agriculture in a social amoeba. (2011) Nature 469, 393-396
- Saxer, G., Brock, D.A., Strassmann, J.E., and Queller, D.C. (2010) Cheating does not explain selective differences at high and low relatedness in a social amoeba. BMC Evolutionary Biology 10:76
- Brock, D.A., van Egmond, W.N., Shamoo, Y., Hatton, R.D., and Gomer, R.H. (2006) A 60-kilodalton protein component of the counting factor complex regulates group size in Dictyostelium discoideum. Eukaryotic Cell 5, 1532-1538
- Brock, D.A. and Gomer, R.H. (2005) A secreted factor represses cell proliferation in Dictyostelium. Development 132, 4553-4562
- Brock, D.A., Ehrenman, K., Ammann, R., Tang, Y., and Gomer, R.H. (2003) Two components of a secreted cell-number counting factor bind to cells and have opposing effects on cAMP signal transduction in Dictyostelium. J. Biol. Chem. 278: 52262-52272
- Brock, D.A., Hatton, R.D., Giurgiutiu, D-V, Scott, B., Jang, W., Ammann, R., and Gomer, R.H (2003) CF45-1, a secreted protein which participates in group size regulation in Dictyostelium. Eukaryotic Cell 2, 788-797.
- Brock, D.A., Hatton, R.D., Giurgiutiu, D-V, Scott, B., Ammann, R., and Gomer, R.H. (2002) The different components of a multisubunit cell number-counting factor have both unique and overlapping functions. Development 129, 3657-3668.
- Brock, D.A. and Gomer, R.H. (1999) A cell-counting factor regulating structure size in Dictyostelium. Genes & Development 13:1960-1969.
- Brock, D.A., Buczynski, F., Spann, T.P., Wood, S.A., Cardelli, J., and Gomer, R.H. (1996) A Dictyostelium mutant with defective aggregate size determination. Development 122:2569-2578.
The Queller/Strassmann Lab 