Research Interests:

My lab currently studies viruses in soil. Soil harbors an incredible abundance and diversity of viruses that infect bacteria, fungi, plants and other organisms. In addition to direct impacts on ecosystem health as agents of disease and mortality, viruses — somewhat surprisingly — have significant influences on ecosystem ecology and environmental chemistry. For example, by killing 30 percent of the bacteria in the oceans every day, viruses affect carbon flow through food webs that link bacteria all the way up to large macroorganisms. Although viruses are likely to have similar impacts in soil, we know very little about soil viruses, and my lab is working to bridge that knowledge gap. We use genomic and computational approaches to learn what soil viruses are where, how they impact the organisms that they infect, and how they affect carbon cycling, and plant health and productivity.