Alexandra Worden (original) (raw)

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American microbiologist

Alexandra Zoe Worden
Worden in 2017
Born 1970 (age 53–54)Middlesex County, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater Wellesley College
Known for work on Biogeochemical cycling, Evolutionary biology
Scientific career
Fields Microbiology, Oceanography
Institutions Marine Biological Laboratory, University of Chicago, Fellow: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Adjunct: University of California, Santa Cruz
Doctoral advisor Brian Binder

Alexandra (Alex) Z. Worden (born 1970) is a microbial ecologist and genome scientist known for her expertise in the ecology and evolution of ocean microbes and their influence on global biogeochemical cycles.

Early life and education

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Worden was born in 1970, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. She attended Wellesley College, where she received a B.A. in history and performed a concentration in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences coursework at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked in the laboratories of the marine geochemist and paleoceanographer John M. Edmond,[1] the climate scientist Reginald Newell,[2] and the biological oceanographer Sallie W. Chisholm. She received a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, in 2000.

Her early exposure to engineering came through computer programming at BBN Technologies before attending university and with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology solar electric car project. At the time, the award winning MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team[3] included several individuals who then became leading innovators in the tech world, including Gill Pratt[4] and Megan Smith, and the team was founded by Worden's brother, James Worden.[5][6][7]

Worden started her laboratory in 2004 as Assistant Professor at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science in Miami, Florida. In 2007 she was recruited to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute on the U.S. West Coast while it was under the leadership of Marcia McNutt, who now serves as president of the US National Academy of Sciences. While at MBARI Worden also moved through the ranks to Full Professor Adjunct at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and remains Adjunct at UCSC. She then spent five year founding the Ocean EcoSystems Biology Unit[8] at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Institute for Ocean Science in Kiel, Germany. She is now a Senior Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory and Professor of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago which are affiliates.

Worden's early awards came from NASA Earth Systems Science Graduate Fellowship and University of Georgia Regents Award as a graduate student. In 2000 she received a US National Science Foundation Microbial Biology Postdoctoral Fellowship in support of her groundbreaking research on picoeukaryotes. Upon founding her lab in 2004 she was awarded a Young Investigator Award.[9]

In 2009, Worden was named a scholar of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), later becoming a senior fellow of CIFAR (2011). She was selected from an international pool of leading scientists as a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Marine Investigator in 2013,[10] an award given for her "creativity, innovation, and potential to make major, new breakthroughs".[11] In 2015 and 2016 Worden was a Fellow in Marine and Climate Science at the HWK[12] in Germany. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the honorific leadership group of the American Society for Microbiology[13] in 2016. In 2021 she was appointed a Max Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön[14] and named a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.[15] In 2022 she was elected to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.[16]

Worden is a proponent of STEM education and innovation and has highlighted the need for relevant "...role models to inspire greater diversity and creativity" in science.[17]

Worden's research focuses on the physiology and ecology of eukaryotic phytoplankton and their roles in the carbon cycle.[18][19] She initiated this research through an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial Biology and expanded it thereafter by adapting multiple molecular and omic methods to characterize the evolution and ecological contributions of these photosynthetic plankton, which are now known to be major ocean primary producers.[20][21] At Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a different research pursuit on microbial interactions, while in the laboratory of Farooq Azam, led to her work that overturned the idea that Vibrio cholerae existed primarily attached to copepods in aquatic systems.[22] This was considered important for understanding the ecology of this human pathogen and vectors for transmission of infective cells. During this period she and Azam introduced the concept of Ecosystems Biology (also spelled Eco-systems Biology, EcoSystems Biology or (Eco)-systems Biology), coining the term in a 2004 perspective.[23] The concept was embraced by the scientific community in several later perspectives,[24][25] and is being pursued by human microbiome-biologist Jeroen Raes and microbial oceanographer Edward DeLong. A Jacques Monod conference on Marine Eco-Systems Biology was initiated in 2015.[26]

Worden helped pioneer "targeted metagenomics"[27][28][29] wherein cells of particular interest are separated from the masses using flow cytometry (on a ship) and genomes are then sequenced from only the cells of greatest interest. Using this approach Worden and collaborators at the DOE Joint Genome Institute sequenced partial genomes from a key group of uncultured eukaryotic algae whilst showing the distribution of these photosynthetic protists in the ocean. Most recently, her lab adapted these approaches to study uncultured unicellular predators in the ocean, and discovered giant viruses that infect Choanoflagellates, a widespread predator group related to animals. Remarkably, the viruses bring to the non-photosynthetic, predatory host complete bacteriorhodopsin-like photosystems that pump protons. The authors also highlighted the importance of understanding the cell biological role of the viral rhodopsin photosystem in infected hosts[30]

Her laboratory also investigates ancestral components of land plants,[31] evolutionary biology and distributions of uncultured taxa[32][33] and interactions between viruses and phytoplankton host cells. In 2015, she and co-authors called for a "rethinking of the marine carbon cycle".[34] Worden publishes in the fields of environmental microbiology, evolutionary biology, genome science and oceanography.

Worden is married and has two children.[35][36]

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  15. ^ "Harvard Radcliffe Institute Announces 2021–2022 Fellows".
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  18. ^ "European Commission : CORDIS : News and Events : Green genes provide insights into climate change". cordis.europa.eu.
  19. ^ DOE Joint Genome Institute (October 16, 2008). "JGI Community Faces: Alexandra Z. Worden" – via YouTube.
  20. ^ Worden Alexandra Z (2004). "Assessing the dynamics and ecology of marine picophytoplankton: The importance of the eukaryotic component". Limnology and Oceanography. 49 (1): 168–179. Bibcode:2004LimOc..49..168W. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.527.5206. doi:10.4319/lo.2004.49.1.0168. S2CID 86571162.
  21. ^ Martin, Cyrus (April 2015). "Biology's dark matter". Current Biology. 25 (8): R301–R307. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2015.03.010. PMID 26082952. S2CID 28834947.
  22. ^ Worden AZ, Seidel M, Smriga S, Wick A, Malfatti F, Bartlett D, Azam F (2006). "Trophic regulation of Vibrio cholerae in coastal marine waters". Environmental Microbiology. 8 (1): 21–29. Bibcode:2006EnvMi...8...21W. doi:10.1111/j.1462-2920.2005.00863.x. PMID 16343318.
  23. ^ Azam, F; Worden, A. Z. (2004). "Oceanography. Microbes, molecules, and marine ecosystems". Science. 303 (5664): 1622–4. doi:10.1126/science.1093892. PMID 15016987. S2CID 10101482.
  24. ^ Raes, J; Bork, P (2008). "Molecular eco-systems biology: Towards an understanding of community function" (PDF). Nature Reviews Microbiology. 6 (9): 693–9. doi:10.1038/nrmicro1935. PMID 18587409. S2CID 8652850.
  25. ^ Karsenti, E; Acinas, S. G.; Bork, P; Bowler, C; De Vargas, C; Raes, J; Sullivan, M; Arendt, D; Benzoni, F; Claverie, J. M.; Follows, M; Gorsky, G; Hingamp, P; Iudicone, D; Jaillon, O; Kandels-Lewis, S; Krzic, U; Not, F; Ogata, H; Pesant, S; Reynaud, E. G.; Sardet, C; Sieracki, M. E.; Speich, S; Velayoudon, D; Weissenbach, J; Wincker, P; The Tara Oceans, Consortium (2011). "A Holistic Approach to Marine Eco-Systems Biology". PLOS Biology. 9 (10): e1001177. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001177. PMC 3196472. PMID 22028628.
  26. ^ "CNRS – Conférences Jacques Monod 2015". www.cnrs.fr.
  27. ^ Cuvelier, Marie L.; Allen, Andrew E.; Monier, Adam; McCrow, John P.; Messié, Monique; Tringe, Susannah G.; Woyke, Tanja; Welsh, Rory M.; Ishoey, Thomas; Lee, Jae-Hyeok; Binder, Brian J.; DuPont, Chris L.; Latasa, Mikel; Guigand, Cédric; Buck, Kurt R.; Hilton, Jason; Thiagarajan, Mathangi; Caler, Elisabet; Read, Betsy; Lasken, Roger S.; Chavez, Francisco P.; Worden, Alexandra Z. (August 17, 2010). "Targeted metagenomics and ecology of globally important uncultured eukaryotic phytoplankton". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 107 (33): 14679–14684. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10714679C. doi:10.1073/pnas.1001665107. PMC 2930470. PMID 20668244.
  28. ^ Raven JA (2012). "Algal biogeography: metagenomics shows distribution of a picoplanktonic pelagophyte". Current Biology. 22 (17): R675–7. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.07.030. PMID 22974994.
  29. ^ Martin, Cyrus (April 20, 2015). "Biology's dark matter". Current Biology. 25 (8): R301–R307. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2015.03.010. PMID 26082952.
  30. ^ Needham, David M.; Yoshizawa, Susumu; Hosaka, Toshiaki; Poirier, Camille; Choi, Chang Jae; Hehenberger, Elisabeth; Irwin, Nicholas A. T.; Wilken, Susanne; Yung, Cheuk-Man; Bachy, Charles; Kurihara, Rika; Nakajima, Yu; Kojima, Keiichi; Kimura-Someya, Tomomi; Leonard, Guy; Malmstrom, Rex R.; Mende, Daniel R.; Olson, Daniel K.; Sudo, Yuki; Sudek, Sebastian; Richards, Thomas A.; Delong, Edward F.; Keeling, Patrick J.; Santoro, Alyson E.; Shirouzu, Mikako; Iwasaki, Wataru; Worden, Alexandra Z. (October 8, 2019). "A distinct lineage of giant viruses brings a rhodopsin photosystem to unicellular marine predators". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116 (41): 20574–20583. Bibcode:2019PNAS..11620574N. doi:10.1073/pnas.1907517116. PMC 6789865. PMID 31548428.
  31. ^ Archibald JM (2009). "Green Evolution, Green Revolution". Science. 324 (5924): 191–192. Bibcode:2009Sci...324..191A. doi:10.1126/science.1172972. PMID 19359572. S2CID 27187310.
  32. ^ redOrbit (January 21, 2011). "Biologists Find New Group Of Algae Living In Fresh And Salt Water – Redorbit". redorbit.com.
  33. ^ Archived January 24, 2012, at the Wayback Machine SeaTechnology Magazine Article on newly discovered algae
  34. ^ Worden, A. Z.; Follows, M. J.; Giovannoni, S. J.; Wilken, S; Zimmerman, A. E.; Keeling, P. J. (2015). "Environmental science. Rethinking the marine carbon cycle: Factoring in the multifarious lifestyles of microbes". Science. 347 (6223): 1257594. doi:10.1126/science.1257594. PMID 25678667.
  35. ^ "Alexandra Worden and the eukaryote tree of life". aaas.org. June 10, 2016.
  36. ^ "Arlington native named American Academy of Microbiology fellow". arlington.wickedlocal.com.