Research
All of the members of the Sharp Lab team have the opportunity to get hands-on experience with laboratory and field research during the academic year and throughout the summer months.
We explore the microbial ecology of a wide range of marine invertebrates, including corals, sponges, tunicates, bryozoans, and bivalves. While the questions that drive us are ecological, we employ a wide variety of tools and approaches from molecular biology, microbiology, classical field work, chemical ecology, and advanced microscopy.
All of the members of the Sharp Lab team have the opportunity to get hands-on experience with laboratory and field research during the academic year and throughout the summer months.
We explore the microbial ecology of a wide range of marine invertebrates, including corals, sponges, tunicates, bryozoans, and bivalves. While the questions that drive us are ecological, we employ a wide variety of tools and approaches from molecular biology, microbiology, classical field work, chemical ecology, and advanced microscopy.
Studying the temperate coral Astrangia poculata Research in the Sharp Lab is centered on the diversity, dynamics, and distribution of microorganisms associated with corals and coral reef organisms. Like most animals on the planet, corals harbor diverse but specific communities of microorganisms (their "microbiome") that have direct influence on their health and fitness. Based in New England, we focus our efforts primarily on the curious, temperate, local coral, Astrangia poculata, and its microbiome, in order to learn more about how the microbial community composition and activity is regulated by the host, by other symbiotic partners, and by environmental factors. It is especially critical to understand how microbes respond to environmental change and mediate the health and fitness of animals in marine ecosystems, especially in the face of changing oceans, changing coastlines, and changing climate. Below are some of our current Astrangia projects: Microbial Ecology and Multipartner Symbioses Using the facultatively symbiotic coral Astrangia poculata as our study organism, we are exploring the principles of microbiome assembly in corals, and teasing apart how microbiome composition and activity is regulated and maintained. Astrangia poculata is unlike most tropical corals - it occurs with variable levels of symbiotic algae, Symbiodiniaceae, in its tissues, and it can withstand extreme temperature fluctuations. Therefore, A. poculata offers us the unique ability to test the influence of facultative photosynthetic symbiosis and seasonal temperatures on microbiome structure. Using microscopy and next-generation DNA sequencing technologies, we have found that season, not symbiont state, influences the microbiome structure in A. poculata in Rhode Island. In laboratory experiments, however, we found evidence that photosymbionts exert influence over the microbiome’s recovery from disturbance. In a recently published collaborative work with Dr. Anya Brown (UC Davis) and Dr. Amy Apprill (WHOI), we have been working to identify members of the A. poculata microbiome that might be key to the coral's response to cold winter temperatures, now available in this article. We hope that we will be able to translate our findings in A. poculata to informed management solutions for tropical coral species, which currently are in massive decline due to human-induced ocean warming events. Astrangia poculata Husbandry and Reproduction As part of our goal to establish Astrangia poculata as a useful model system for studying various aspects of symbiosis in cnidarians, we coordinate a multi-institutional collaboration that uses the RWU facilities to develops methods for scalable A. poculata husbandry, spawning, fertilization, and larval settlement. Corals and Microplastics Pollution Current research suggests that there are hundreds of millions of tons of plastics in our oceans. Millions of tons of plastic continue to enter the oceans each year. The macroplastics that enter the ocean often get weathered down into microplastics (<5mm), which have been found in oceans all across the world, even in the most remote regions and at the deepest depths. Microplastics are consumed by a variety of marine organisms, especially filter feeders and suspension feeders. In our lab, we are working to learn more about the microbial ecology of microplastics pollution in Narragansett Bay, and how that impacts marine invertebrate-bacterial interactions. Using Astrangia poculata, a local heterotrophic coral species, we are learning more about the microbial aspects of microplastics pollution. This research was funded by the Rhode Island IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (RI-INBRE SURF), the Rhode Island NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR SURF) programs, and the RWU Fund to Promote Scholarship and Teaching. Our recent publication on Astrangia, plastics, feeding behavior, and microbes can be found here. In another recent collaboration with Dr. Nikki Fogarty (UNCW), Dr. Colleen Bove, and Dr. Sarah Davies (Boston University), we learned about the microbiome and immune response to plastics exposure in the endangered Caribbean staghorn coral Acropora cervicornis. Antibacterial Compounds and the Astrangia Microbiome Our lab created and is maintaining a library of bacterial strains (The Astrangia Culture Collection) that we have isolated from Astrangia poculata. We are using that collection to learn more about the ecology of bacterial production of antimicrobial compounds, and to explore their potential use for aquaculture, clinical, and biotechnology applications. The Temperate Coral Research Group Along with collaborators from dozens of institutions around the country, the Sharp Lab co-coordinates the Temperate Coral Research Group, a growing network of researchers who are actively engaged in Astrangia and Oculina research and working toward the common goal of establishing these corals as model/experimental systems for studying the physiology, ecology, genetics, and symbiosis involved in coral responses to environmental change. We hold an annual research conference on RWU campus. These conferences have been funded by generous support from RWU, Southern Connecticut State University, and Boston University. We're excited that temperate corals are being used as experimental models for studying cnidarians and animal-microbe symbioses! Interested in learning more, or joining the collaborative? Please contact Koty Sharp for more information. Find information about the Temperate Coral Research Group and its annual meetings here. |