Our research group is broadly interested in uncovering the molecular mechanisms that control how organisms sense and respond to changes in their environment. Our primarily focus is on marine and freshwater cyanobacteria, oxygen producing microorganisms that are the progenitors of land plants and responsible for nearly one half of the Earth’s current primary productivity.
We are currently focused on uncovering the signaling systems that control cellular responses to changes in light color availability.
Our current projects address the mechanisms and regulation of light color responsiveness in freshwater lakes and throughout the world's oceans, collectively called "chromatic acclimation".
We are also developing additional cutting edge molecular genetic tools for marine Synechococcus by incorporating new technology such as CRISPR for gene deletion, allelic replacement, inducible repression of gene expression and providing these to the biological oceanography research community for use in their studies.
Research:
- Blue-Green Light Color Acclimation in Marine Cyanobacteria
Research areas:
- Genomics and Bioinformatics
- Microbial Cell Biology and Environmental Responses
- Plant Molecular Biology
Research: Light & nutrient acclimation; Aquatic biology; Cyanobacteria; Marine biology
Research Area:
Research Interests:
- environmental regulation of gene expression in bacteria
