Jana M U'Ren

Interests

Research

Microbial genomics, metagenomics, microbial ecology, phylogenetics, evolutionary biology.

Teaching

Microbial genomics, metagenomics, data analytics, microbial ecology.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Journals/Publications

• Carbone, I., White, J. B., Miadlikowska, J., Arnold, A. E., Miller, M. A., Magain, N., Uren, J. M., & Lutzoni, F. (2019). T-BAS Version 2.1: Tree-Based Alignment Selector toolkit for evolutionary placement of DNA sequences and viewing alignments and specimen metadata on curated and custom trees. Microbiology Resource Announcements. doi:10.1128/MRA.00328-19
• Dietzel, K., Valle, D., Fierer, N., U'Ren, J. M., & Barberan, A. (2019). Geographical Distribution of Fungal Plant Pathogens in Dust Across the United States. FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION, 7.
• Taylor, M. J., Mannan, R. W., U'Ren, J. M., Garber, N. P., Gallery, R. E., & Arnold, A. E. (2019). Age-related variation in the oral microbiome of urban Cooper's hawks (Accipiter cooperii). BMC MICROBIOLOGY, 19.
• U'Ren, J. M., Lutzoni, F., Miadlikowska, J., Zimmerman, N. B., Carbone, I., May, G., & Arnold, A. E. (2019). Host availability drives distributions of fungal endophytes in the imperilled boreal realm. NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION, 3(10), 1430-1437.
• Uren, J. M., Harrington, A., del Olmo-Ruiz, M., Garcia, K., Sandberg, D., Huang, Y., Hoffman, M. T., & Arnold, A. E. (2019). Coniochaeta endophytica sp. nov., a foliar endophyte associated with healthy photosynthetic tissue of Platycladus orientalis (Cupressaceae). Plant and Fungal Systematics, 64, 65–79. doi:10.2478/pfs-2019-0008
• Huang, Y., Bowman, E. A., Massimo, N., Garber, N. P., Uren, J. M., Sandberg, D. C., & Arnold, A. E. (2018). Using collections data to infer biogeographic, environmental, and host structure in communities of endophytic fungi. Mycologia. doi:doi: 10.1080/00275514.2018.1442078.
• Padumadasa, C., Xu, Y., Wijeratne, E. K., Espinosa-Artiles, P., Uren, J. M., Arnold, A. E., & Gunatilaka, L. (2018). Cytotoxic and Other Metabolites from Teratosphaeria sp. FL2137, a fungus associated with foliage of Pinus clausa. Journal of Natural Products. doi:10.1021/acs.jnatprod.7b00838
• Carbone, I., White, J. B., Miadlikowska, J., Arnold, A. E., Miller, M. A., Kauff, F., U'Ren, J. M., May, G., & Lutzoni, F. (2017). T-BAS: Tree-Based Alignment Selector toolkit for phylogenetic-based placement, alignment downloads and metadata visualization: an example with the Pezizomycotina tree of life. BIOINFORMATICS, 33(8), 1160-1168.
• Hurwitz, B. L., Ponsero, A., Thorton, Jr., J., & Uren, J. M. (2017). Phage hunters: Computational strategies for finding phages in large-scale 'omics datasets. Virus Research, Volume 244, 110-115. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.virusres.2017.10.019
• Sarmiento, C., Zalamea, P., Dalling, J. W., Davis, A. S., Stump, S. M., U'Ren, J. M., & Arnold, A. E. (2017). Soilborne fungi have host affinity and host-specific effects on seed germination and survival in a lowland tropical forest. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 114(43), 11458-11463.
• Shaffer, J. P., U'Ren, J. M., Gallery, R. E., Baltrus, D. A., & Arnold, A. E. (2017). An Endohyphal Bacterium (Chitinophaga, Bacteroidetes) Alters Carbon Source Use by Fusarium keratoplasticum(F-solani Species Complex, Nectriaceae). FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY, 8.

Presentations

• Uren, J. M. (2019, January). Microbial Communities in the Phyllosphere of B2-TRF. Biosphere 2 Tropical Rainforest WALD Research Workshop. Biosphere 2: University of Arizona.
• Uren, J. M. (2019, July). Circumglobal diversity and distributions of endophytic fungi in boreal plants and lichens.. Early Career Investigator Symposium, "Life at the Edge", Botanical Society of America Meeting. Tucson, AZ: International Association for Plant Taxonomy,.
• Uren, J. M. (2019, November). Linking phyllosphere fungal communities to functional traits. Northern Arizona University, Department of Biology, Fall Seminar Series. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University.
• Uren, J. M., Nickerson, M., Moore, L. P., Endara, L., & Burleigh, J. G. (2019, August). Influence of host phylogeny and leaf chemistry on foliar endophytic communities of Quercus.. Mycological Society of America Annual Meeting. St. Paul, MN: Mycological Society of America.
• Uren, J. M. (2018, November). Linking phyllosphere fungal community assembly, evolutionary history, and metabolic diversity to ecosystem function. Ecosystem Genomics Seminar. BIO5.
• Uren, J. M. (2018, September). Linking Endophyte Community Assembly, Evolutionary History, and Functional Traits. Microbial Ecology and Evolution in the Phyllosphere. Santa Barbara, CA: Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California Santa-Barbara.
• Uren, J. M., Carbone, I., & Arnold, A. E. (2018, July). Merging endophytes into the Xylariceae tree of life: insights gained from large-scale multilocus phylogenetic analyses. International Mycological Congress. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
  More info

  Workshop at IMC on Xylariaceae

Poster Presentations

• Uren, J. M., Nickerson, M., Moore, L. P., Endara, L., & Burleigh, J. G. (2019, March). Influence of host phylogeny and leaf chemistry on foliar endophytic communities of Quercus.. 30th Fungal Genetics Meeting. Asilomar, CA: Genetics Society of America.
• Uren, J. M., Wisecaver, J., & Arnold, A. E. (2019, March). Comparative and population genomics of endophytic Xylariaceae. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute Genomics of Energy and the Environment. San Francisco, CA: Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute.
• Arnold, A. E., Uren, J. M., Trouet, V. M., & Oita, S. (2018, August). Relationships of foliar endophyte communities in Picea mariana to tree age, biomass, and latitude. International Symbiosis Society.
• Barberan, A., Dietzel, K., Valle, D., & Uren, J. M. (2018, August). Understanding the geographical distribution of fungal plant pathogens. 17th International Symposium on Microbial Ecology. Leipzig, Germany.
• Young, J. C., Meredith, L., Sengupta, A., Van Haren, J. L., Uren, J. M., Uren, J. M., Sengupta, A., Van Haren, J. L., Young, J. C., & Meredith, L. (2017, Dec). Microbial drivers of spatial heterogeneity of nitrous oxide pulse dynamics following drought in an experimental tropical rainforest. AGU International Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA.
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  Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a long-lived, potent greenhouse gas with increasing atmospheric concentrations. Soil microbes in agricultural and natural ecosystems are the dominant source of N2O, which involves complex interactions between N-cycling microbes, metabolisms, soil properties, and plants. Tropical rainforests are the largest natural source of N2O, however the microbial and environmental drivers are poorly understood as few studies have been performed in these environments. Thus, there is an urgent need for further research to fill in knowledge gaps regarding tropical N-cycling, and the response of soil microbial communities to changes in precipitation patterns, temperature, nitrogen deposition, and land use. To address this data gap, we performed a whole-forest drought in the tropical rainforest biome in Biosphere 2 (B2) and analyzed connections between soil microbes, forest heterogeneity, and N2O emissions. The B2 rainforest is the hottest tropical rainforest on Earth, and is an important model system for studying the response of tropical forests to warming with controlled experimentation. In this study, we measured microbial community abundance and diversity profiles (16S rRNA and ITS2 amplicon sequencing) along with their association with soil properties (e.g. pH, C, N) during the drought and rewetting at five locations (3 depths), including regions that have been previously characterized with high and low N2O drought pulse dynamics (van Haren et al., 2005). In this study, we present the spatial distribution of soil microbial communities within the rainforest at Biosphere 2 and their correlations with edaphic factors. In particular, we focus on microbial, soil, and plant factors that drive high and low N2O pulse zones. As in the past, we found that N2O emissions were highest in response to rewetting in a zone hypothesized to be rich in nutrients from a nearby sugar palm. We will characterize microbial indicator species and nitrogen cycling genes to better resolve N cycling across the forest. Understanding how N2O formation is mediated by soil microbes in response to drought in tropical rainforests is challenging given the great diversity of microbial communities and metabolisms involved, but is critical for understanding the source of global increases in atmospheric N2O.