Dr. Paul Carini Receives Simons Early Career Investigator Award

Paul Carini Award1.jpg

Dr. Paul Carini, investigator for University of Arizona Superfund Research Center (UA SRC) Project 3, just received the Simons Early Career Investigator in Marine Microbial Ecology and Evolution Award from the Simons Foundation. The purpose of this $666,000 award is to help launch the careers of outstanding investigators in the fields of microbial ecology and evolution in marine or natural freshwater systems.

Through his research, Dr. Carini will advance our understanding of how deep-sea bacteria of the genus Thalassospira divide limited energy resources across the production of metabolites and gene expression under very slow growth conditions.

Dr. Carini and his team will be culturing bacteria that were isolated from 6-million-year-old deep-sea sediments in the laboratory under energy-limiting conditions that mimic those found in their natural habitat. They will be investigating the cellular mechanisms that allow these cells to persist for millions of years under extreme starvation and maintain the capacity to "wake up" when the conditions are just right. The team will be using a combination of transcriptomics (the study of RNA molecules in a cell), metabolomics (the study of metabolites, or substance necessary for metabolism), and other tools to determine how the genomes of these cells confer phenotypes that allow cell persistence at ultralow growth rates.

Congratulations Dr. Paul Carini!

Related papers & write ups:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mBio.01150-21
https://uncultured.carinilab.com/p/genome-decay-over-millions-of-years