Rate My Professor Mike McDonald

McDonald’s research employs experimental evolution to elucidate the genetics of adaptation in microbes, including bacteria, yeast, and bacteriophages. By evolving populations over thousands of generations in controlled laboratory environments, his group investigates how organisms adapt to antibiotics, environmental shifts, and interspecies interactions, utilizing high-throughput robotic liquid handling, whole genome sequencing, and molecular genetic techniques. Key interests include horizontal gene transfer’s facilitation of resistance spread and potential for reverse evolution, as well as co-evolution dynamics in microbial communities. His influential publications encompass “The dynamics of molecular evolution over 60,000 generations” (Good et al., Nature, 2017), “Sex speeds adaptation by altering the dynamics of molecular evolution” (McDonald et al., Nature, 2016), “Horizontal gene transfer potentiates adaptation by reducing selective constraints on the spread of genetic variation” (Woods et al., PNAS, 2020), and “Horizontal gene transfer facilitates the molecular reverse-evolution of antibiotic sensitivity in experimental populations of H. pylori” (Nguyen et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2024). With more than 3,400 citations, McDonald’s contributions have advanced predictive models for microbial evolution and AMR mitigation strategies. He received Monash University’s Vice-Chancellor’s Diversity and Inclusion Award in 2020.