Center for Chemical Currencies of a Microbial Planet (C-CoMP)

Image showing 5 diatom cells (Coscinodiscus sp.), Image by Loay Jabre.

Image showing a diatom (possibly Guinardia sp.) Image by Loay Jabre.

Image showing a dinoflagellate (Ceratium sp.). Image by Loay Jabre.

And more images here:

A video of a copepod (a zoop!):

Dr. Loay Jabre stands on the deck of the R/V Atlantic Explorer holding a plankton net that he used to collect samples for the Planktoscope on the 2025 C-CoMP March Cruise. Photo provided by Loay Jabre.

Dr. Loay Jabre runs the Planktoscope on the R/V Atlantic Explorer during the 2025 C-CoMP March Cruise. Loay collects images and videos of plankton on a laptop computer that is situated to the left of the Planktoscope on a lab bench. A sample is loaded onto the Planktoscope. Photo by McKenzie Powers.

Images of plankton collected using the Planktoscope along the AE2504 cruise track. Sampling locations are represented by circles on the map and color indicates sea surface temperature at the time of collection. Figure by Loay Jabre.

🌊🦠#FieldworkFriday!
On the 2025 C-CoMP March Cruise, Dr. Loay Jabre (loayjabre.bsky.social) brought a Planktoscope(an open-source and high-throughput plankton imaging platform) on board to track community shifts of plankton in real time from BATS to the LTER site!! Check it out:

She is fascinated by the ability of marine organisms to adapt to changing environments and how this knowledge can be translated to mitigate the effects of a changing ocean 🌊🌎🦠.

Headshot of Amanda Ellis standing in the lab, wearing a lab coat. Photo provided by Amanda Ellis.

Amanda works within a culture hood in the lab while wearing a lab coat. Photo provided by Amanda Ellis.

📣#MTTM
Amanda Ellis is a C-CoMP B2P fellow working with Drs. Sarah Hurley & Sonya Dyhrman @lamont.columbia.edu. She studies the ability of marine phytoplankton 🌊 to acclimate + evolve to increasing temperature🌡️+ acidity by tracking changes to oxygen evolution + respiration rate.

Marie Delcy presents her research on "job crafting" to another person as they both stand in front of her poster at the 2025 Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER) Meeting. Photo provided by Erin Dolan.

Marie Delcy and Dr. Erin Dolan stand in front of Marie's poster at the 2025 Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER) Meeting. Photo provided by Erin Dolan.

#ECRSpotlight
PhD student Marie Delcy recently presented her C-CoMP research on how early career researchers #ECRs "job craft" to make their research training a better fit with their interests & aspirations at the 2025 @sabercommunity.bsky.social meeting. Marie works with @erindolan1.bsky.social.

Claire Garfield and McKenzie Powers filter incubation seawater in the main lab on the R/V Atlantic Explorer during the C-CoMP March 2025 cruise. Lines of tubing pass through the peristaltic pump heads, drape off the lab bench, and terminate in large blue carboys that collect the filtered seawater. Photo by Erin Maybach.

The lab set-up for filtering samples for metatranscriptomics during the incubations on the C-CoMP March 2025 cruise. A series of peristaltic pumps are arranged on the lab bench with tubing passing through. Seawater is pumped up through the tubing from a carboy, passed through a filter holder containing a filter to remove microbial cells, and filtrate is collected in another carboy. Filtering is done in red light to minimize disturbance of photosynthetic cells in samples that were collected at night. Photo by Erin Maybach.

🌊🦠#FieldworkFriday!
It’s a carbon feast 🍽️ and microbes🦠are invited! During the March 2025 C-CoMP cruise, early career researchers incubated surface ocean microbial communities on novel carbon sources produced by phytoplankton to study carbon drawdown rate and post-uptake fate.

An ecological framework for microbial metabolites in the ocean ecosystem The ocean microbe-metabolite network involves thousands of individual metabolites that encompass a breadth of chemical diversity and biological functions. These microbial metabolites mediate biogeoch....

📣 New C-CoMP Pub. Alert!
Interested in marine microbial metabolites 🌊🦠? If so, check out this new pub., led by Bryndan Durham & Winn Johnson, that emerged from C-CoMP's Labile DOM workshop: An ecological framework for microbial metabolites in the ocean ecosystem.
tinyurl.com/54bu2xm7

Daniella is excited to uncover how tiny organisms sustain life at the edges of the planet and what they can teach us about resilience in a changing world 🌎.

Daniella is fascinated by how microbes🦠adapt & respond to environmental change, especially in extreme ecosystems. She’s also interested in remote sensing approaches and is working with PACE satellite data 🛰️ to study shifts in phytoplankton community composition.

Daniella stands in front of Clio the AUV on the deck of the RV Atlantic Explorer during the C-CoMP March 2025 cruise. Photo by Fadime Stemmer.

Daniella helps process samples from Clio the AUV in the lab on board the RV Atlantic Explorer. Photo by Fadime Stemmer.

Daniella stands on the deck of the RV Atlantic Explorer during the C-CoMP March 2025 cruise. Photo by Fadime Stemmer.

📣#MTTM
Daniella Asturias @daniellaasturias.bsky.social is a C-CoMP B2P fellow with @maksaito.bsky.social @whoi.edu. She investigates B12 mutualisms between bacteria & diatoms in Antarctic ecosystems❄️ by using proteomics & trace metal analysis to explore how these interactions shape nutrient cycling.

Claire Garfield, Sonya Dyhrman, and Arianna Krinos filter seawater collected during a diel time point in one of the labs on the R/V Atlantic Explorer. The room is bathed in red light (instead of bright white overhead lights) to minimize light exposure to seawater microbes that were collected at night. Photo by McKenzie Powers.

During diel work, the science team used red light while sample processing to prevent microbes from responding to the presence of white light. All in all, the science team filtered an estimated ~3900 L of seawater 🌊 during night diel time points alone!

The CTD rosette hovers over the side of the R/V Atlantic Explorer in preparation for deployment at night for a diel sampling time point. Moonlight filters through clouds and reflects off the surface of the dark ocean. Photo by Claire Garfield.

🌊🦠#FieldworkFriday!
During the March 2025 cruise, C-CoMP rigorously sampled diel ☀️🌙 (and sometimes hourly) dynamics at 15 m at 2 stations: the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site and Northeast U.S. Shelf (NES) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Station 11 site.

Fadime is fascinated by biology’s ability to drive large-scale biogeochemical cycles through enzymes that are produced by marine microbes 🦠. Even though they are tiny, these microbes control and balance large-scale seawater composition 🌊 and climate 🌎.

Headshot of Fadime Stemmer. Photo provided by Fadime Stemmer.

Fadime prepares to collect seawater samples from the CTD rosette on the deck of the R/V Atlantic Explorer during a stormy day at sea. Photo by Loay Jabre.

Fadime prepares for a Clio deployment in a lab on the R/V Atlantic Explorer during the March 2025 C-CoMP cruise. Fadime stands behind a lab bench that is covered with Clio filter rigs encased in bags. Photo by Loay Jabre.

📣#MTTM
Fadime Stemmer (@fuuchan20.bsky.social) is a MIT/ @whoi.edu Joint Program PhD Student working with @maksaito.bsky.social. She is investigating the role that proteases (enzymes that degrade proteins) play in marine carbon cycling & how trace metal availability impacts these processes.

Flyer for BioGeoSCAPES Modeling Workshop scheduled for September 10-12, 2025 and containing a QR code that links to the application form.

📣 Interested in meeting new collaborators and projecting changes in ocean metabolisms 🌊 over different space & time scales using modeling? Sign up for the
@biogeoscapes.bsky.social Modeling Workshop, co-sponsored by C-CoMP, @whoi.edu in September 2025. Apply by 6/30: tinyurl.com/2ub5zx8p.

Video by McKenzie Powers. Photos by Emily Hu and Ben Acosta.

8 or so members of the research team gather around the CTD rosette on the deck of the RV Atlantic Explorer to collect seawater for downstream sample processing. Photo by Emily Hu.

Natalie Graham collects a seawater sample into a glass vial from the spigot on one of the Niskin bottles on the CTD. This sample was collected to measure the concentration of dissolved organic carbon in seawater. Photo by Ben Acosta.

Once the CTD landed 🛬 on deck, the research team would quickly gather around it to collect seawater into vials and carboys for various forms of downstream processing, including lots of filtering, to capture and separate microbes 🦠 and particles from the seawater 🌊!

🌊🦠#FieldworkFriday!
During the March 2025 cruise, C-CoMP deployed 68 CTD casts in 12 days. A few casts profiled chemical/biological properties of the water column 🌊 down to a few hundred meters, but 64 casts were used to investigate diel microbial dynamics at 15 meters 🦠☀️🌛!

Postdoctoral Associate MIT - Postdoctoral Associate - Cambridge MA 02139

‼️I'm looking for a postdoc‼️ Come join effort in using metagenomes to quantify microbial catabolic potential and carbon substrate availability at the ecosystem level. We seek to understand evolutionary forces shaping the carbon cycle. Part of ccomp-stc.org

careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl...

Ben is interested in how organisms adapt to their environments, seeking insight into how evolution gives rise to the extraordinary diversity of life we see today. He's so excited to see where this research leads!

Headshot of Ben Acosta wearing a lab coat inside a laboratory with a lab bench and shelves of glassware in the background. Photo by Anna Chen.

Ben stands on the side of the CTD rosette on the deck of the RV Atlantic Explorer during the C-CoMP March 2025 cruise. Photo by McKenzie Powers.

Ben prepares to pipette into a flask containing a light green/yellow solution within a culture hood. Photo by Anna Chen.

📣#MTTM
Ben Acosta is a PhD student @lamont.columbia.edu working with Dr. Sarah Hurley. Ben studies how marine phytoplankton evolve in response to a changing ocean 🌊 by conducting experiments 🧪 that investigate how warming + acidification impact metabolite release by phytoplankton.

The translator is a powerful tool that can help explore how tiny microbes impact the vast ocean and our planet 🌍. Wiley is thrilled to be part of the ocean modeling community 🌊, even though he discovered that he gets quite seasick! Despite that, he still enjoys fieldwork when the water is calm 🐠.

Headshot of Dr. Wiley Wolfe. Photo provided by Wiley Wolfe.

Wiley climbs down a ladder next to a piling underneath the Scripps pier to meet a small boat with four people on board. Photo by Erik Jepsen.

Wiley pulls a scuba cylinder from a rack in the dive locker. Photo by Erik Jepsen.

📣#MTTM
Dr. Wiley Wolfe (@wileywolph.bsky.social) is a postdoc working with @scottdoney.bsky.social at @uvaenvisci.bsky.social. He’s a biogeochemical modeler 🧪 who is building a “Translator” to help ocean models communicate with microbial models 🦠.

Researchers and crew braved three storms, with 30-40 kt winds and 10-20 ft seas. Despite weather delays and interruptions, the team successfully and safely completed the core mission of the cruise and collected hundreds of samples!
Video by Daniella Asturias.

A wave crashes on the deck of the RV Atlantic Explorer during a storm, a rough sea streaked with white water and a stormy, grey sky visible in the background. Photo by McKenzie Powers.

🌊🦠#FieldworkFriday!
Last March, C-CoMP set out on the RV Atlantic Explorer to compare diel surface ocean microbial dynamics between oligotrophic and productive regions. Time to batten down the hatches!
Photo by McKenzie Powers.

The report

“Principles for Responsible and Effective Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Development and Governance”

was developed for the international High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy
🌊

Ah the promise of new knowledge, excitement, and additional questions contained in those microcentrifuge tubes! Happy sequencing! 🧬

Mica is excited to be able to combine her interests in math and biology in a way that lets her study fascinating ocean science 🌊 topics with practical global implications.

Headshot of Mica. Photo provided by Mica Yang.

Mica on the deck of the R/V Atlantic Explorer with a blue ocean and sky as the background. Photo provided by Mica Yang.

📣#MTTM
Mica Yang is a PhD student in Markus Covert's lab at Stanford University. She is a mathematical modeler who uses computer simulations 💻 to study and predict the behavior of marine microbes 🦠 in diverse environments.