Human activities affect the marine environment in many ways, but particularly the change of local conditions due to ocean warming and acidification poses a global threat to the marine environment and its’ inhabitants. Within this overarching theme, my interest focuses on the stress and resilience mechanisms of marine invertebrates on a molecular level. My thesis research will investigate epigenetic memory to heat stress in the model organism Aiptasia by comparing histone modifications in response to stress between previously exposed and naïve organisms.

Climate change biology Coral resilience Epigenetics Molecular biology