Forest Rohwer
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Forest Rohwer (born 1969) is an American microbial ecologist and Professor of Biology at
San Diego State University San Diego State University (SDSU) is a public research university in San Diego, California. Founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CSU) system ...
.http://coralreefsystems.org/content/forest-rohwer His particular interests include
coral reef A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups. C ...
microbial ecology and
virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsk ...
es as both evolutionary agents and opportunistic pathogens in various environments.


Education and career

Rohwer holds bachelor's degrees with emphases in biology, chemistry, and history from the
College of Idaho The College of Idaho (C of I) is a private liberal arts college in Caldwell, Idaho. Founded in 1891, it is the state's oldest private liberal arts college and has an enrollment of over 1,000 students. The college's alumni include eight Rh ...
and earned his doctorate in molecular biology from the
San Diego State University San Diego State University (SDSU) is a public research university in San Diego, California. Founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CSU) system ...
/
University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...
Joint Doctoral Program.


Contributions


Shotgun metagenomics

In 2002, as a research scientist
San Diego State University San Diego State University (SDSU) is a public research university in San Diego, California. Founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CSU) system ...
, Rohwer performed the first shotgun
metagenome Metagenomics is the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental or clinical samples by a method called sequencing. The broad field may also be referred to as environmental genomics, ecogenomics, community genomics or microb ...
(Breitbart et al. 2002). This method of randomly sequencing DNA from the environment transformed the study of viruses and microbes in the environment and associated with macroorganisms.


Viral diversity

The first shotgun metagenome, also called
virome Virome refers to the assemblage of viruses that is often investigated and described by metagenomic sequencing of viral nucleic acids that are found associated with a particular ecosystem, organism or holobiont. The word is frequently used to de ...
, showed that there were thousands of viral species per liter of seawater (Breitbart et al. 2002; Angly et al. 2006). Working with Anca Segall, Mya Brietbart, Rob Edwards, and the SDSU Biomath Group, Rohwer performed the first virome studies of corals, soils, sediments and humans (Breitbart et al. 2003, 2005, 2008). Based on this work, he proposed that viruses, and particularly bacteriophage, are the most diverse biological entities on Earth.


Phage Proteomic Tree

Virome studies showed that most viral diversity was extreme and almost completely unknown. Rob Edwards and Rohwer proposed that a genome-based taxonomy was need to link the metagenomic data to the existing, morphology-based taxonomy. The controversial Phage Proteomic Tree was the resulting system and was featured in ''Life in Our Phage World'' (2015).


Holobionts

Working with
Nancy Knowlton Nancy Knowlton is a coral reef biologist and a former Sant Chair for Marine Science at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Life She graduated from Harvard University, and from the University of California, Berkeley, with a PhD. ...
at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Rohwer showed that reef-building
corals Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secr ...
harbored hundreds of thousands of unique bacterial species (Rohwer et al. 2002). They proposed that these bacteria, viruses and other microbes were important for coral health and formed an ecological unit called the
holobiont A holobiont is an assemblage of a host and the many other species living in or around it, which together form a discrete ecological unit through symbiosis, though there is controversy over this discreteness. The components of a holobiont are i ...
. Further, they hypothesized that changing membership of the holobiont was the primary mechanism of adaption to changing environmental conditions.


Microbialization of coral reefs

In 2005, Rohwer participated in the Northern Line Island expedition headed by Enric Sala and Stuart Sandin. The goal of this research cruise was to determine the effects of human populations on coral reefs. Rohwer performed the first shotgun metagenomes from these islands and proposed that overfishing by humans led to microbialization. Subsequent studies showed microbialization is a global phenomenon and a primary reason for the decline of coral reefs (McDole et al. 2012). This work was featured in Rohwer's book ''Coral Reef in the Microbial Seas''.


Bacteriophage Attachment to Mucus (BAM) Immunity

While studying corals, Kristen Marhaver and Rohwer noted that bacteriophage, viruses that infect bacteria, were four to five times more abundant than the surrounding seawater. Building on this observation, Jeremy Barr and Rohwer (Barr et al. 2013; 2015) showed that bacteriophage bind to mucus through hypervariable protein domains displayed on the
capsid A capsid is the protein shell of a virus, enclosing its genetic material. It consists of several oligomeric (repeating) structural subunits made of protein called protomers. The observable 3-dimensional morphological subunits, which may or ma ...
. This effectively concentrates the bacteriophage in the mucus, where they kill bacteria and protect the underlying animal tissue. Rohwer has proposed that this Bacteriophage Attachment to Mucus (BAM) Immunity is the first example and origin of the specific immune response.


Piggyback-the-Winner

Microbialized coral reefs have relatively high bacteria abundances and reduced bacteriophage abundances. To explain this observation, Rohwer and colleagues (Knowles et al. 2016) proposed that the
temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout ...
life cycle was the predominant bacteriophage life cycle at high host abundances. The resulting bacterial lysogens would be protected from other bacteriophage via superinfection exclusion and protists via expression of virulence factors.


Work

He has authored more than 180 scientific papers and book chapters, as well as two popular science book, ''Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas'' (2010) and ''Life in Our Phage World'' (2015). He pioneered the use of
metagenomics Metagenomics is the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental or clinical samples by a method called sequencing. The broad field may also be referred to as environmental genomics, ecogenomics, community genomics or microb ...
as a means to characterize viral and microbial communities, such as those associated with coral reefs. His field work with colleagues includes expeditions to the Northern Line Islands in 2005 and 2010, and to the Southern Line Islands in 2009.


Awards

Rohwer has been named a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a Canadian-based global research organization that brings together teams of top researchers from around the world to address important and complex questions. It was founded in 1982 and is s ...
(CIFAR). In 2008, he received the Young Investigators Award from the International Society of Microbial Ecology (ISME).


Personal life

Growing up in
Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyomi ...
, Rohwer learned
scuba diving Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for " Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Chr ...
in a frigid glacial lake. Later he took that skill to tropical waters where, for more than twenty years, he has been diving and doing research on coral reefs around the world. He lives in University Heights, San Diego, California, with microbial geneticist Anca Segall, and their daughter Willow.


See also

* Proteomics


References


External links


The Rohwer Lab at San Diego State University

Coral Reef Systems website including documentary videos and the blog of the 2010 research expedition to the Line Islands
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rohwer, Forest American ecologists American molecular biologists American virologists College of Idaho alumni San Diego State University faculty Living people 1969 births