Check it out! This is our first paper on the topic of Legionella – see how this pathogen distributes in world soils, and how amazingly little we know about its diversity – https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.10.710744v2.full.

We are recruiting an undergraduate research assistant for our Summer 2026 UROP Mentoring Grant! See eligibility, project description, and application information in the poster or here. Send an email to Maggie for questions!

Our lab participated in the 2025 Discover Mānoa on November 15! We had a table showcasing how soil and its microbiome are amazing. Simon and Hans prepared Petri dishes with bacterial and fungal colonies; Xiaoding and Aaron designed carbon and nitrogen cycling clip art; we also ran the experiment of adding hydrogen peroxide to life vs. sterile soils to see how microbial enzymes in soil can make hydrogen peroxide bubble! What a fun day among all the amazing exhibits!

Hans presented his ongoing study about Legionella’s distribution in global soils at the 1st SOEST Symposium on November, 13, at the East West Center Conference Hall. This is the only talk from PBRC at the Symposium, showcasing how climate change can affect huma health via the function and ecology of microbes.

Dr. Hans Singh delivered his talk titled “A Global Analysis of Legionella Distribution and Diversity Across Soils” at the C-MĀIKI M4 seminar on Oct 29th, 2025. Hans introduced why a global analysis is a good idea to assess Legionella’s distribution along environmental gradients across continents, and presented his bioinformatic tools to gather 4000+ soil microbiome into one picture! The audience had passionate discussion after the talk.

Undergraduate student Simon Lee worked hard the entire summer 2025 isolating Legionella from soil, water, and air near the Mānoa Stream. He presented his poster “Isolation, Identification, and Enumeration of Legionella spp. From Environmental Samples” at UROP’s SURE Symposium on August 2nd. Great job Simon!

Simon will stay in the lab for the Fall 2025 semester and keep refining the protocol to isolate environmental Legionella.

Dr. Hans Singh joined us as a postdoc to lead our Legionella project! He came from Dr. Paul Jensen’s lab in the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, now ready to apply his expertise in environmental microbiology, natural product and metaanalysis to explore soils in Hawaiʻi. Welcome Hans!

Our Microbiome COBRE research project on environmental Legionella has been approved by NIGMS! We will explore the diversity and distribution of Legionella, a bacteria genus containing disease agent causing legionellosis, in terrestrial environments of O’ahu. The aim is to identify predictors of Legionella persistence among climate, edaphic conditions, and host protists abundance.

HI SMiL was born on the 15th of August, 2024! We are ready to explore microorganisms in soil and other terrestrial environments in Hawaii and beyond.