Microbes from Antarctica: exploring their role in global climate change.

Join us at BosLab for a fun seminar about cold-loving bacteria from the Antarctic! Guest speaker Dr. Mrina Nikrad will share stories of her previous work and adventures in Antarctica to uncover how oceanic bacteria are responding to global climate change.

Mrina has a Ph.D. in molecular microbial ecology from the University of Delaware, College of Marine Studies, and a Masters degree in Biomedicine from the University of Colorado, School of Medicine. For her dissertation work, she conducted research on ocean microbes in the West Antarctica Peninsula in summer and late fall. Heterotrophic bacteria in the ocean take up organic carbon and respire it into carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Thus, they play a vital role in the global carbon cycle that is poorly understood. With warming conditions affecting ecosystems in polar regions, the activity of these bacteria may change, in turn affecting the global cycling of carbon.

Mrina has also researched microbes in other ecosystems ranging from recycled agricultural waters to Arctic permafrost. She currently works at a microbiome biotech company in Cambridge. You can follow her on twitter at @extremophile (https://mobile.twitter.com/extremophile).