Peek behind the paper: Engineering an incubation environment that mimics in situ conditions for in vitro coastal microbiome studies

In this ‘Peek behind the paper’, Brad Hunter, a first-year master’s student in the Becket Lab at California State University San Marcos (CA, USA), discusses the inspiration behind their recently published paper on a mock coastal incubation system to mitigate logistical issues of sampling at the coast. The Becket Lab focuses on the effects of wastewater runoff in horizontal gene transfer of antibiotic-resistant genes in coastal microbiomes.  After an 8-year career in software engineering, Hunter moved to pursue a career in biological research. His background in computer science has been crucial in developing bioinformatic pipelines, computing platforms and statistical analysis in...