Oysters, Ocean Acidification, and -Omics

Yaamini Venkataraman is a Ph.D student at the Roberts Lab, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington:

As a California Bay Area native, I grew up going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was always floored by the intricacies of the organisms themselves, but also how complex their environments were. These experiences pushed me to get my B.S. in General Biology and B.A. in Environmental Policy at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). I studied several different species-environment interactions, including copepods and copper toxicity at the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, marsh plants species and increased carbon inputs at the Smithsonian Institute for Environmental Studies and limpet-surfgrass interactions under acidified conditions at UCSD. At the Roberts Lab, I study how climate change is going to affect the organisms in our current and future oceans. My current projects involve examining ocean acidification’s effects on oysters using “-omic” techniques. Specifically, I study how exposure to ocean acidification in one generation affects the epigenome, and whether or not transgenerational epigenetic inheritance contributes to phenotypic plasticity in Pacific and Eastern oysters.