Research

Research Focus

Recent years have brought a changing imperative in life sciences sparked by the revolution of genomic tools to study the molecular setup of organisms. The development of next-generation sequencing changed our understanding of microbial diversity associated with organisms and environments. There is now a multitude of studies that support the notion that host-specific microbial consortia (‘microbiomes’) are associated with all multicellular organisms and provide functions related to metabolism, immunity, and environmental adaptation. Consequently, the biology of animals and plants must be understood in light of the host and its associated microbial consortia, the so-called ‘metaorganism’.

The research interest of our group builds around this new concept. Our focus is to understand the structure and function of microbial associates and how they support host physiology and adaptation to changing environments. In particular, we study aquatic metaorganisms with a focus on so-called coral holobionts, composed of the coral animal host, intracellular photosynthetic dinoflagellate algae, and associated bacteria. Coral holobionts form the keystone species of coral reef ecosystems that are critically endangered by the effects of global climate change.

Research Areas

Development of novel methods, concepts, and frameworks

Development of novel methods, concepts, and frameworks to delineate  function and identity of aquatic metaorganism member species.

  • SymPortal (symportal.org) - Analytical framework and platform for genetically resolving the algal symbionts of reef corals using next-generation sequencing (NGS) data of the ITS2 rDNA (paper)
  • ReefGenomics.org (reefgenomics.org) - online open access repository to centralize genomic and transcriptomic data from marine organisms (paper)
  • Microbiome flexibility - The potential/capacity for dynamic restructuring of the host microbiome in face of environmental change (paper)

Seawater anemone Aiptasia as a  model system

Employment / establishment of the seawater anemone Aiptasia as a  model system to study regulatory mechanisms of the cnidarian-algal symbioses.

  • Aiptasia genome (paper)
  • Aiptasia microbiome manipulation (paper)
  • Aiptasia NanoSIMS (paper)

CBASS (Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System)

Development of analytical frameworks and diagnostics that support climate change resilience using field-based physiological and genomic coral reef surveys
CBASS (Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System) - newly developed portable experimental system to run standardized short-term acute heat stress assays to identify resilient genotypes / reefs for downstream experimental examination and prioritization for conservation/restoration (paper, paper, paper). CBASS assays allow determination of the ED50, the standardized temperature threshold at which 50% of initial photosystem efficiency is lost (paper).