Adrienne Correa is an Associate Professor of Global Change Microbial Ecology in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley.
What microbiome-related work do you do?
My lab group studies how microorganisms impact reef health and ecosystem function under global change. We seek creative ways to leverage microbial symbionts (e.g., dinoflagellates, bacteria, viruses) and trophic interactions to improve reef resistance and resilience to anthropogenic stress. We are testing the extent to which predators influence prey microbiome assembly through the distribution of viable prey-associated microbes in their feces. This trophic transmission of symbionts could assist corals in initial symbiont acquisition and in acclimatizing to warming seas. We are also exploring the extent to which viral infections of corals and their microbial symbionts contribute to coral disease, thermal tolerance and other characteristics. We have documented a high prevalence of positive-sense, single stranded RNA viruses that infect the dinoflagellate symbionts of corals on reefs; these viral infections become more productive under conditions that cause bleaching (a coral disease state). We are working to further develop this virus-symbiont-coral system by solving the capsid structure of these viruses and build tools to better visualize and analyze coral-associated viral infections.
For those interested in your work, could you suggest one key reading from your recent papers?
Trophic transmission overview: Grupstra et al. 2022
Coral virus work: Howe-Kerr et al. 2023
Learn more about Adrienne at the Correa Lab website!