Carly E. Karrick 🏳️‍🌈

Reef-building corals form obligate symbioses with photosynthetic dinoflagellate algae in the family Symbiodiniaceae (LaJeunesse et al., 2018). I am interested in when and how sexual reproduction (i.e., meiosis) influences Symbiodiniaceae stress response. Building off of work done by Figueroa et al. (2021), I am using transcriptomics to understand the timing of meiosis and expression of meiosis-related genes. My future work will investigate abiotic triggers of meiosis in Symbiodiniaceae, with long-term goals of applying this to assisted evolution efforts.