Lam Vo

Lam Vo ‘26 

(he/him)

Home Department: Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (Emonet Lab)

Research Project: Investigating non-genetic adaptation by collective migration

I’m interested in understanding how the tug-of-war between phenotypic diversity and collective behaviors enable cell populations to survive, using bacterial collective migration as a model system. Bacterial cells travel together by consuming attractants in their environment and forming their own gradient to follow, yet they exhibit diverse motility behaviors. To migrate together, cells must spatially organize themselves along the gradient they generate, with better swimmers leading at the front and worse swimmers staying at the back, eventually falling behind the group. I’m investigating how migrating bacterial populations utilize this spatial organization to: 1) quickly adapt their phenotypic compositions to the environments they navigate, and 2) perform virulence division of labor when infecting hosts.

Relevant Publications

Vo L, Avgidis F, Mattingly H, Balasubramanian R, Shimizu T, Kazmierczak BI, Emonet T. (2024) Non-genetic adaptation by collective migration. (Preprinit; under revision in PNAS)

Phan TV, Mattingly HH, Vo L, Marvin JS, Looger LL, Emonet T. (2024) Direct measurement of dynamic attractant gradients reveals breakdown of the Patlak-Keller-Segel chemotaxis model. 

Mattingly HH, Emonet T. (2022) Collective behavior and nongenetic inheritance allow bacterial populations to adapt to changing environments.  

Fu X, Kato S, Long J, Mattingly HH, He C, Vural DC, Zucker SW, Emonet T. (2018) Spatial self-organization resolves conflicts between individuality and collective migration.