About us

The Rainey lab is a new addition to the NZ Institute for Advanced Study at Massey University's, Auckland Campus. Located on the North Shore of Auckland, just 20 minutes drive from the city, the campus provides a unique opportunity to study and work in a collaborative atmosphere, in an idyllic setting. The topics of research are diverse. Much of our work is motivated by a wish to understand the mechanistic bases of ecological and evolutionary process. The focus of study is bacteria and phage - both the well-behaved laboratory kind as well as the not-so-well-behaved types from the wild.

Other people have written about our work

L. R. B. Mann (2009) 1 Apr; a "review" of Rainey's Professorial Lecture. Mann critiques the dogmatism of neo-Darwinism: "I'm sorry I couldn't be kinder in my appraisal, but that is how I see it".

Nature (2008) 456, 296-299; a "news feature" by Marek Kohn who has written an excellent article on some of the ins and outs of recent incarnations of group selection. He's done a great job saying so much in such a short space.

New York Times (2007) 26 June; an article by Carl Zimmer on insights into natural selection gained through experimental evolution

Nature (2007) 446, 386-7; a "News & Views" article by Rosemary Gillespie and Brent Emmerson commenting on Tad Fukami's paper that explored the relationship between immigration history and diversity (includes comment of the complementary paper by Meyer & Kassen on predation and impacts on diversity published in the same issue). Nature also produced a podcast.

Heredity (2007) 99, 361-363; a "News and Commentary" by Ole Seehausen that nicely ties together emerging ideas regarding chance, historical contingency and ecological determinism: the focus being experimental studies with microbes, specifically the Pseudmonas work of Tad Fukami and others. PDF

Chemical and Engineering News (2007) 31 Jan; a comment on Susse Kirkelund Hansen's work on the evolution of species interactions in a biofilm community.

Frankfurter Allgemeine (2007) 31 Jan; a further comment on Susse Kirkelund Hansen's work but you have to pay 2 Euros for the pleasure of reading it (unfortunately we do not collect royalties on their use of Susse's pictures). At Deutschlandfunk you can listen to a radio broad cast in German and read a transcript. Nature also produced a podcast.

Nature Genetics (2006) 38, 979-80; a "news and views" article by Susanna Remold on Chris Knight's work describing the surprisingly pervasive effects of a single amino acid change in the methyl esterase WspF (one of the simple mutational routes to the wrinkly spreader phenotype).

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (2004) 101, 8257-8; a "commentary" on Chris Knight's analysis of the predicted proteomes of more than 100 genome-sequenced organisms.

Current Biology (2003) 14, R73-4; a "dispatch" by Martin Ackermann and Lin Chao on cooperation as evident in the mat-forming wrinkly spreaders.

Nature (2000) 406, 463-4; a "news and views" article by Peter Morin on Rees Kassen's paper that used experimental bacterial populations to explore the relationship between productivity and diversity.

New Scientist (1999) 13 Feb, 29-35; an article by Kate Douglas on replaying life's tape.

Science (1999) 284, 2108-2110; an article by Tim Appenzeller on experimental evolution (a good introduction to the subject).

National Geographic (1999) 195, 6-31; an article by Virginia Morell on the diversity and variety of life.