-Omics-Informed Plankton Analytics Laboratory (OPAL) Krinos Group at Stony Brook University

Projects

Projects in the OPAL Group center on ecosystem impacts of taxonomic diversity, effects of environmental stressors on eukaryotic microbes, and identifying trait relationships that can be encoded into models. These objective are achieved using a combination of -omics data collection and analysis, phytoplankton culturing in the lab, and coastal environmental fieldwork.

Some Key Collaborators for Listed Projects

And many others! Due to the scale of science we do in the OPAL Group, we highly value local and [inter]national collaboration.

publication resource website project
Translating from gene expression to model parameters
Translating from gene expression to model parameters Transcripts to traits

Using community gene expression data for microbial eukaryotes, the goal of this project is to recover custom, taxon-specific “traditional” model parameters

resource project
Time series gene expression data for coastal phytoplankton dynamics
Time series gene expression data for coastal phytoplankton dynamics Water quality monitoring at high throughput

Time-series environmental data coupled with gene expression allows us to identify genes linked to phytoplankton resilience to challenging environmental conditions, and contextualize ecological shifts that impact water quality

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Salton Sea microbial ecology
Salton Sea microbial ecology At the intersection of public health and environmental research

The Salton Sea is a large, hypersaline lake (CA) with impaired water quality. Via biogeochemical models and ongoing measurements, we are studying ecological dynamics that contribute to public health hazards

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Multiscale modeling
Multiscale modeling Linking genome-scale to the water column

Work in collaboration with the C-CoMP NSF STC to develop a coupling between a genome-scale metabolic model (GEM/FBA) and a 1-D water column biogeochemical model and hence link complex biology to oceanographic dynamics

software project
Intraspecific diversity
Intraspecific diversity Coccolithophores and beyond

Studying intraspecific diversity in important phytoplankton groups can be used as a proxy for current model-relevant diversity & future capacity for resilience to changing environmental conditions

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Improving protistan taxonomic annotations
Improving protistan taxonomic annotations Databases and software tools

Via tools like EUKulele and tax-aliquots, developing openly-available software and workflows to improve the fidelity of protistan taxonomic annotations

software
Models that predict protistan trophy
Models that predict protistan trophy In the euphotic zone and at hydrothermal vents

Identifying -omics-based indicators to predict whether a microbe is more likely a heterotroph, a phototroph, or both

project resource
Post-hurricane microbial ecology
Post-hurricane microbial ecology Disturbance ecology and harmful algal blooms

Opportunistic sampling after Hurricanes Helene and Milton in Tampa Bay (2024) to study microbial ecological impacts of disturbance. Funding from Phycological Society of America Grants In Aid of Research (GIAR) program

project resource
Diatom blooms in the North Bering Sea
Diatom blooms in the North Bering Sea Harmful algal blooms in vulnerable coastal ecosystems

Augmenting existing efforts to study impacts of stratification in the North Bering Sea with environmental -omics data. Funding from North Pacific Research Board

project resource