Virginia Rich

I am a graduate student in the DeLong Lab.

B.A. from U.C. Berkeley 1998 Molecular & Cellular Biology: Genetics Division Integrative Biology 1998-2001: various teaching and research positions at the University of Washington, Seattle, and U.W.'s Friday Harbor Labs 2002 - present: PhD student in the DeLong Lab, co-advised by Ed DeLong and by George Somero at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station[

Thesis Project: Developing "Census" Microarrays for Marine Microbial Ecology

Research Description: Over the last 7+ years, Ed and his lab have constructed large-insert environmental clone libraries, made from the microbial fraction of seawater, taken from a variety of depths at several locations. As part of an NSF Microbial Observatory Grant to E.D., we are trying to leverage the sequence information in the Monterey Bay library to construct a "census" microarray for a portion of the native microbial community. This array will then allow a higher-throughput mapping of species than has previously been possible.

Monterey Bay is a long-term ecological research site, with the efforts of several major research institutions focused on understanding the Bay's oceanography. DNA samples have been collected by the DeLong Lab at monthly intervals since 1998, in tandem with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's (MBARI) Biological Oceanography Group's (BOG) research cruises. We hope that by examining these archived DNA samples with the microarray, and by exploring the results of this multi-year census in the context of the BOG's groups chemcial, physical and biological analyses, we can form a more complete picture of the dynamics of Monterey Bay microbial communities.