Alexandra Worden

Last updated

Alexandra Zoe Worden
AlexandraWorden 2017.jpg
Worden in 2017
Born1970 (age 53–54)
Middlesex County, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater Wellesley College
Known forwork on Biogeochemical cycling, Evolutionary biology
Scientific career
Fields Microbiology, Oceanography
Institutions Marine Biological Laboratory, University of Chicago, Fellow: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Adjunct: University of California, Santa Cruz
Doctoral advisor Brian Binder

Alexandra (Alex) Z. Worden (born 1970) is a microbial ecologist and genome scientist known for her expertise in the ecology and evolution of ocean microbes and their influence on global biogeochemical cycles.

Contents

Early life and education

Worden was born in 1970, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. She attended Wellesley College, where she received a B.A. in history and performed a concentration in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences coursework at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked in the laboratories of the marine geochemist and paleoceanographer John M. Edmond, [1] the climate scientist Reginald Newell, [2] and the biological oceanographer Sallie W. Chisholm. She received a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, in 2000.

Her early exposure to engineering came through computer programming at BBN Technologies before attending university and with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology solar electric car project. At the time, the award winning MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team [3] included several individuals who then became leading innovators in the tech world, including Gill Pratt [4] and Megan Smith, and the team was founded by Worden's brother, James Worden. [5] [6] [7]

Career

Worden started her laboratory in 2004 as Assistant Professor at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science in Miami, Florida. In 2007 she was recruited to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute on the U.S. West Coast while it was under the leadership of Marcia McNutt, who now serves as president of the US National Academy of Sciences. While at MBARI Worden also moved through the ranks to Full Professor Adjunct at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and remains Adjunct at UCSC. She then spent five year founding the Ocean EcoSystems Biology Unit [8] at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Institute for Ocean Science in Kiel, Germany. She is now a Senior Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory and Professor of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago which are affiliates.

Worden's early awards came from NASA Earth Systems Science Graduate Fellowship and University of Georgia Regents Award as a graduate student. In 2000 she received a US National Science Foundation Microbial Biology Postdoctoral Fellowship in support of her groundbreaking research on picoeukaryotes. Upon founding her lab in 2004 she was awarded a Young Investigator Award. [9]

In 2009, Worden was named a scholar of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), later becoming a senior fellow of CIFAR (2011). She was selected from an international pool of leading scientists as a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Marine Investigator in 2013, [10] an award given for her "creativity, innovation, and potential to make major, new breakthroughs". [11] In 2015 and 2016 Worden was a Fellow in Marine and Climate Science at the HWK [12] in Germany. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the honorific leadership group of the American Society for Microbiology [13] in 2016. In 2021 she was appointed a Max Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön [14] and named a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. [15] In 2022 she was elected to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. [16]

Worden is a proponent of STEM education and innovation and has highlighted the need for relevant "...role models to inspire greater diversity and creativity" in science. [17]

Research

Worden's research focuses on the physiology and ecology of eukaryotic phytoplankton and their roles in the carbon cycle. [18] [19] She initiated this research through an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial Biology and expanded it thereafter by adapting multiple molecular and omic methods to characterize the evolution and ecological contributions of these photosynthetic plankton, which are now known to be major ocean primary producers. [20] [21] At Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a different research pursuit on microbial interactions, while in the laboratory of Farooq Azam, led to her work that overturned the idea that Vibrio cholerae existed primarily attached to copepods in aquatic systems. [22] This was considered important for understanding the ecology of this human pathogen and vectors for transmission of infective cells. During this period she and Azam introduced the concept of Ecosystems Biology (also spelled Eco-systems Biology, EcoSystems Biology or (Eco)-systems Biology), coining the term in a 2004 perspective. [23] The concept was embraced by the scientific community in several later perspectives, [24] [25] and is being pursued by human microbiome-biologist Jeroen Raes and microbial oceanographer Edward DeLong. A Jacques Monod conference on Marine Eco-Systems Biology was initiated in 2015. [26]

Worden helped pioneer "targeted metagenomics" [27] [28] [29] wherein cells of particular interest are separated from the masses using flow cytometry (on a ship) and genomes are then sequenced from only the cells of greatest interest. Using this approach Worden and collaborators at the DOE Joint Genome Institute sequenced partial genomes from a key group of uncultured eukaryotic algae whilst showing the distribution of these photosynthetic protists in the ocean. Most recently, her lab adapted these approaches to study uncultured unicellular predators in the ocean, and discovered giant viruses that infect Choanoflagellates, a widespread predator group related to animals. Remarkably, the viruses bring to the non-photosynthetic, predatory host complete bacteriorhodopsin-like photosystems that pump protons. The authors also highlighted the importance of understanding the cell biological role of the viral rhodopsin photosystem in infected hosts [30]

Her laboratory also investigates ancestral components of land plants, [31] evolutionary biology and distributions of uncultured taxa [32] [33] and interactions between viruses and phytoplankton host cells. In 2015, she and co-authors called for a "rethinking of the marine carbon cycle". [34] Worden publishes in the fields of environmental microbiology, evolutionary biology, genome science and oceanography.

Personal life

Worden is married and has two children. [35] [36]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microbial ecology</span> Study of the relationship of microorganisms with their environment

Microbial ecology is the ecology of microorganisms: their relationship with one another and with their environment. It concerns the three major domains of life—Eukaryota, Archaea, and Bacteria—as well as viruses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sallie W. Chisholm</span> American oceanographer, marine biologist

Sallie Watson "Penny" Chisholm is an American biological oceanographer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an expert in the ecology and evolution of ocean microbes. Her research focuses particularly on the most abundant marine phytoplankton, Prochlorococcus, that she discovered in the 1980s with Rob Olson and other collaborators. She has a TED talk about their discovery and importance called "The tiny creature that secretly powers the planet".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microbial loop</span> Trophic pathway in marine microbial ecosystems

The microbial loop describes a trophic pathway where, in aquatic systems, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is returned to higher trophic levels via its incorporation into bacterial biomass, and then coupled with the classic food chain formed by phytoplankton-zooplankton-nekton. In soil systems, the microbial loop refers to soil carbon. The term microbial loop was coined by Farooq Azam, Tom Fenchel et al. in 1983 to include the role played by bacteria in the carbon and nutrient cycles of the marine environment.

The microbial food web refers to the combined trophic interactions among microbes in aquatic environments. These microbes include viruses, bacteria, algae, heterotrophic protists. In aquatic ecosystems, microbial food webs are essential because they form the basis for the cycling of nutrients and energy. These webs are vital to the stability and production of ecosystems in a variety of aquatic environments, including lakes, rivers, and oceans. By converting dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and other nutrients into biomass that larger organisms may eat, microbial food webs maintain higher trophic levels. Thus, these webs are crucial for energy flow and nutrient cycling in both freshwater and marine ecosystems.

Global Ocean Sampling Expedition Ocean exploration genome project to assess genetic diversity in marine microbial communities

The Global Ocean Sampling Expedition (GOS) is an ocean exploration genome project whose goal is to assess genetic diversity in marine microbial communities and to understand their role in nature's fundamental processes. It was begun as a Sargasso Sea pilot sampling project in August 2003; Craig Venter announced the full expedition on 4 March 2004. The two-year journey, which used Craig Venter's personal yacht, originated in Halifax, Canada, circumnavigated the globe and terminated in the U.S. in January 2006. The expedition sampled water from Halifax, Nova Scotia to the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean. During 2007, sampling continued along the west coast of North America.

<i>Micromonas</i> Genus of algae

Micromonas is a genus of green algae in the family Mamiellaceae.

Farooq Azam is a researcher in the field of marine microbiology. He is a Distinguished Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California San Diego. Farooq Azam grew up in Lahore and received his early education in Lahore. He attended University of Punjab, where he received his B.Sc. in chemistry. He later he received his M.Sc. from the same institution. He then went to Czechoslovakia for higher studies. He received his PhD in microbiology from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. After he received his PhD, Farooq Azam moved to California. Azam was the lead author on the paper which coined the term microbial loop. This 1983 paper involved a synthesis between a number of leaders in the (then) young field of microbial ecology, specifically, Azam, Tom Fenchel, J Field, J Gray, L Meyer-Reil and Tron Frede Thingstad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Picoeukaryote</span> Picoplanktonic eukaryotic organisms 3.0 μm or less in size

Picoeukaryotes are picoplanktonic eukaryotic organisms 3.0 μm or less in size. They are distributed throughout the world's marine and freshwater ecosystems and constitute a significant contribution to autotrophic communities. Though the SI prefix pico- might imply an organism smaller than atomic size, the term was likely used to avoid confusion with existing size classifications of plankton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antje Boetius</span> German biologist (born 1967)

Antje Boetius is a German marine biologist. She is a professor of geomicrobiology at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, University of Bremen. Boetius received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in March 2009 for her study of sea bed microorganisms that affect the global climate. She is also the director of Germany's polar research hub, the Alfred Wegener Institute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward DeLong</span> American microbiologist (born 1958)

Edward Francis DeLong, is a marine microbiologist and professor in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and is considered a pioneer in the field of metagenomics. He is best known for his discovery of the bacterial use of the rhodopsin protein in converting sunlight to biochemical energy in marine microbial communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microbiome</span> Microbial community assemblage and activity

A microbiome is the community of microorganisms that can usually be found living together in any given habitat. It was defined more precisely in 1988 by Whipps et al. as "a characteristic microbial community occupying a reasonably well-defined habitat which has distinct physio-chemical properties. The term thus not only refers to the microorganisms involved but also encompasses their theatre of activity". In 2020, an international panel of experts published the outcome of their discussions on the definition of the microbiome. They proposed a definition of the microbiome based on a revival of the "compact, clear, and comprehensive description of the term" as originally provided by Whipps et al., but supplemented with two explanatory paragraphs. The first explanatory paragraph pronounces the dynamic character of the microbiome, and the second explanatory paragraph clearly separates the term microbiota from the term microbiome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holobiont</span> Host and associated species living as a discrete ecological unit

A holobiont is an assemblage of a host and the many other species living in or around it, which together form a discrete ecological unit through symbiosis, though there is controversy over this discreteness. The components of a holobiont are individual species or bionts, while the combined genome of all bionts is the hologenome. The holobiont concept was initially introduced by the German theoretical biologist Adolf Meyer-Abich in 1943, and then apparently independently by Dr. Lynn Margulis in her 1991 book Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation. The concept has evolved since the original formulations. Holobionts include the host, virome, microbiome, and any other organisms which contribute in some way to the functioning of the whole. Well-studied holobionts include reef-building corals and humans.

Mary Ann Moran is a distinguished research professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia in Athens. She studies the role of bacteria in Earth's marine nutrient cycles, and is a leader in the fields of marine sciences and biogeochemistry. Her work is focused on how microbes interact with dissolved organic matter and the impact of microbial diversity on the global carbon and sulfur cycles. By defining the roles of diverse bacteria in the carbon and sulfur cycles, she connects the biogeochemical and organismal approaches in marine science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oded Beja</span>

Oded Béjà is a professor in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in the field of marine microbiology and metagenomics.

E. Virginia Armbrust is a biological oceanographer, professor, and current director of the University of Washington School of Oceanography. She is an elected member of the Washington State Academy of Science, an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Viral shunt</span>

The viral shunt is a mechanism that prevents marine microbial particulate organic matter (POM) from migrating up trophic levels by recycling them into dissolved organic matter (DOM), which can be readily taken up by microorganisms. The DOM recycled by the viral shunt pathway is comparable to the amount generated by the other main sources of marine DOM.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mya Breitbart</span> American biologist

Mya Breitbart is an American biologist and professor of biological oceanography at the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science. She is best known for her contributions to the field of viral metagenomics. Popular Science recognized her because of her approach of not trying to sequence individual viruses or organisms but to sequence everything in a given ecosystem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marine microbiome</span>

All animals on Earth form associations with microorganisms, including protists, bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses. In the ocean, animal–microbial relationships were historically explored in single host–symbiont systems. However, new explorations into the diversity of marine microorganisms associating with diverse marine animal hosts is moving the field into studies that address interactions between the animal host and a more multi-member microbiome. The potential for microbiomes to influence the health, physiology, behavior, and ecology of marine animals could alter current understandings of how marine animals adapt to change, and especially the growing climate-related and anthropogenic-induced changes already impacting the ocean environment.

Helle Ploug is marine scientist known for her work on particles in seawater. She is a professor at the University of Gothenburg, and was named a fellow of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamie S. Foster</span> American astrobiologist, microbiologist, and academic

Jamie S. Foster is an American astrobiologist, microbiologist, and academic. She is a professor at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Science, and Genetics and Genomes Graduate Program at the University of Florida.

References

  1. ↑ "JOHN EDMOND". web.mit.edu.
  2. ↑ "Professor Reginald Newell dies at 71; studied climate system, air pollution". January 3, 2003.
  3. ↑ "Hello World".
  4. ↑ "Gill Pratt Discusses Toyota's AI Plans and the Future of Robots and Cars". IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News. 2015.
  5. ↑ Wald, Matthew L. (March 6, 1994). "Profile; In Quest for Electric Cars, He Adds the Power of Faith". The New York Times.
  6. ↑ "Solectria – Achieving Goals By Lowering Them". wordpress.com. July 28, 2014.
  7. ↑ "Solar car sets world record – The Tech". tech.mit.edu. Archived from the original on April 12, 2019. Retrieved September 3, 2016.
  8. ↑ "OEB Home – GEOMAR – Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel".
  9. ↑ Mitchum, Gary T. (December 2004). "BOOK REVIEW". Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin. 13 (4): 73–74. Bibcode:2004LimOB..13...73M. doi: 10.1002/lob.200413473 .
  10. ↑ "Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation identifies 16 leading scientists to pursue high-risk research in marine microbial ecology".
  11. ↑ "Mini Microbes Make A Big Splash – Good Times Santa Cruz". goodtimes.sc. February 13, 2013.
  12. ↑ "Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg – Institute for Advanced Study: Home".
  13. ↑ Urban, Joanna. "78 Fellows Elected to the American Academy of Microbiology". www.asm.org. Archived from the original on September 11, 2016. Retrieved September 3, 2016.
  14. ↑ "Alexandra Worden appointed Max Planck Fellow".
  15. ↑ "Harvard Radcliffe Institute Announces 2021–2022 Fellows".
  16. ↑ "List of Members".
  17. ↑ "Women in Oceanography: A Decade Later: Autobiographical Sketches" (PDF). Oceanography. Vol. 27, no. 4. December 2014. p. 252.
  18. ↑ "European Commission : CORDIS : News and Events : Green genes provide insights into climate change". cordis.europa.eu.
  19. ↑ DOE Joint Genome Institute (October 16, 2008). "JGI Community Faces: Alexandra Z. Worden" – via YouTube.
  20. ↑ Worden Alexandra Z (2004). "Assessing the dynamics and ecology of marine picophytoplankton: The importance of the eukaryotic component". Limnology and Oceanography. 49 (1): 168–179. Bibcode:2004LimOc..49..168W. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.527.5206 . doi:10.4319/lo.2004.49.1.0168. S2CID   86571162.
  21. ↑ Martin, Cyrus (April 2015). "Biology's dark matter". Current Biology. 25 (8): R301–R307. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.03.010 . PMID   26082952. S2CID   28834947.
  22. ↑ Worden AZ, Seidel M, Smriga S, Wick A, Malfatti F, Bartlett D, Azam F (2006). "Trophic regulation of Vibrio cholerae in coastal marine waters". Environmental Microbiology. 8 (1): 21–29. Bibcode:2006EnvMi...8...21W. doi:10.1111/j.1462-2920.2005.00863.x. PMID   16343318.
  23. ↑ Azam, F; Worden, A. Z. (2004). "Oceanography. Microbes, molecules, and marine ecosystems". Science. 303 (5664): 1622–4. doi:10.1126/science.1093892. PMID   15016987. S2CID   10101482.
  24. ↑ Raes, J; Bork, P (2008). "Molecular eco-systems biology: Towards an understanding of community function" (PDF). Nature Reviews Microbiology. 6 (9): 693–9. doi:10.1038/nrmicro1935. PMID   18587409. S2CID   8652850.
  25. ↑ Karsenti, E; Acinas, S. G.; Bork, P; Bowler, C; De Vargas, C; Raes, J; Sullivan, M; Arendt, D; Benzoni, F; Claverie, J. M.; Follows, M; Gorsky, G; Hingamp, P; Iudicone, D; Jaillon, O; Kandels-Lewis, S; Krzic, U; Not, F; Ogata, H; Pesant, S; Reynaud, E. G.; Sardet, C; Sieracki, M. E.; Speich, S; Velayoudon, D; Weissenbach, J; Wincker, P; The Tara Oceans, Consortium (2011). "A Holistic Approach to Marine Eco-Systems Biology". PLOS Biology. 9 (10): e1001177. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001177 . PMC   3196472 . PMID   22028628.
  26. ↑ "CNRS – Conférences Jacques Monod 2015". www.cnrs.fr.
  27. ↑ Cuvelier, Marie L.; Allen, Andrew E.; Monier, Adam; McCrow, John P.; Messié, Monique; Tringe, Susannah G.; Woyke, Tanja; Welsh, Rory M.; Ishoey, Thomas; Lee, Jae-Hyeok; Binder, Brian J.; DuPont, Chris L.; Latasa, Mikel; Guigand, Cédric; Buck, Kurt R.; Hilton, Jason; Thiagarajan, Mathangi; Caler, Elisabet; Read, Betsy; Lasken, Roger S.; Chavez, Francisco P.; Worden, Alexandra Z. (August 17, 2010). "Targeted metagenomics and ecology of globally important uncultured eukaryotic phytoplankton". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 107 (33): 14679–14684. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10714679C. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1001665107 . PMC   2930470 . PMID   20668244.
  28. ↑ Raven JA (2012). "Algal biogeography: metagenomics shows distribution of a picoplanktonic pelagophyte". Current Biology. 22 (17): R675–7. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2012.07.030 . PMID   22974994.
  29. ↑ Martin, Cyrus (April 20, 2015). "Biology's dark matter". Current Biology. 25 (8): R301–R307. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.03.010 . PMID   26082952.
  30. ↑ Needham, David M.; Yoshizawa, Susumu; Hosaka, Toshiaki; Poirier, Camille; Choi, Chang Jae; Hehenberger, Elisabeth; Irwin, Nicholas A. T.; Wilken, Susanne; Yung, Cheuk-Man; Bachy, Charles; Kurihara, Rika; Nakajima, Yu; Kojima, Keiichi; Kimura-Someya, Tomomi; Leonard, Guy; Malmstrom, Rex R.; Mende, Daniel R.; Olson, Daniel K.; Sudo, Yuki; Sudek, Sebastian; Richards, Thomas A.; Delong, Edward F.; Keeling, Patrick J.; Santoro, Alyson E.; Shirouzu, Mikako; Iwasaki, Wataru; Worden, Alexandra Z. (October 8, 2019). "A distinct lineage of giant viruses brings a rhodopsin photosystem to unicellular marine predators". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116 (41): 20574–20583. Bibcode:2019PNAS..11620574N. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1907517116 . PMC   6789865 . PMID   31548428.
  31. ↑ Archibald JM (2009). "Green Evolution, Green Revolution". Science. 324 (5924): 191–192. Bibcode:2009Sci...324..191A. doi:10.1126/science.1172972. PMID   19359572. S2CID   27187310.
  32. ↑ redOrbit (January 21, 2011). "Biologists Find New Group Of Algae Living In Fresh And Salt Water – Redorbit". redorbit.com.
  33. ↑ Archived January 24, 2012, at the Wayback Machine SeaTechnology Magazine Article on newly discovered algae
  34. ↑ Worden, A. Z.; Follows, M. J.; Giovannoni, S. J.; Wilken, S; Zimmerman, A. E.; Keeling, P. J. (2015). "Environmental science. Rethinking the marine carbon cycle: Factoring in the multifarious lifestyles of microbes". Science. 347 (6223): 1257594. doi: 10.1126/science.1257594 . PMID   25678667.
  35. ↑ "Alexandra Worden and the eukaryote tree of life". aaas.org. June 10, 2016.
  36. ↑ "Arlington native named American Academy of Microbiology fellow". arlington.wickedlocal.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.