Genome enabled ecology of marine microbes

 

The Thompson

Welcome to the home page of the Rocap lab, located in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington. I am a marine microbial ecologist interested in the evolution and ecology of marine bacteria and phytoplankton. We use a variety of approaches in the lab; physiological (growth experiments and pigment analyses), molecular (quantitative PCR, sequencing and expression assays) and computational (phylogenetic analyses, comparative genomics). The multiple projects in the lab all address common questions: How does genetic diversity arise in marine microbial populations, how is it maintained, and how does it influence ecological success.

Our lab is part of the Marine Molecular Biology Lab, a facility within the College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences at UW. Researchers at MMBL are a diverse group, united by the use of molecular techniques to address ecological questions in aquatic environments.