Research Interests

My current research interests focus on four main areas: 1) the role of marine viruses on microbial mortality and diversification; 2) population dynamics of virio- and bacterio-plankton in the Chesapeake Bay over time and space; 3) microbial genomics and functional genomics; 4) microalgae for biofuels and clean coal.

Marine viruses are known to play a key role on regulating microbial biomass and production. However, little is known about the role of marine viruses on microbial population structure, genetic diversification, and genomic evolution. Our lab uses cyanobacteria/cyanophage and roseobacter/roseophage as two model systems to study the complex interaction between bacteria and their phages. Specific gene markers, including photosynthetic genes psbA and RuBisCO, ITS, viral capsid gene (g20), gene transfer agents, and DNA polymerase gene, have been developed in our lab to co-monitor the populations of both host and phage populations in the aquatic environments. Questions we would like to address are: How diverse are cyanobacteria and cyanophage in the marine environment? How does the phage-host system change temporally and spatially?

To highlight some exciting research achievements, the first cyanophage genome was sequenced and characterized in our lab. Recently, we isolated and sequenced genomes of two novel marine phages that infect marine roseobacters. We first applied the SYBR Gold nucleic acid stain to enumerate viruses and bacteria in seawater [SYBR Gold protocol]. We discovered that the majority of bacterioplankton exhibited repeatable seasonal patterns. We have successfully applied community-based proteomics to characterize estuarine microbial communities, and found the synchronicity between microbial proteomes and community structure. We isolated many unique cyanobacteria and microalgae from diverse aquatic environments. Many algal strains in our collections show great potential for biofuel development and clean coal application.