Jessica Mitchell

Dr. Jessica Mitchell

Postdoctoral Fellow
Jessica Mitchell

I study symbiotic associations between microbes and multicellular organism in the ocean. I am interested in how these associations can expand the metabolic repertoire and thus niches of these organisms, as well as the effect of these associations on the biogeochemistry of the marine system.

I became interested in the role that microbes play in geochemical cycling and ecology when I was an undergraduate at UMass Boston while working on a sediment core project in a freshwater ecology lab. 

Currently, I am working on the symbiotic association of the hydrothermal vent tubeworm, Riftia pachyptila, with chemoautotrophic bacteria.  In particular, I am trying to tease apart the role of the in situ vent environment to the putative metabolic flexibility of the carbon metabolism in this amazing microbe-animal association. 

Contact Information

16 Divinity Avenue
Biological Laboratories Building, 3102
Cambridge, MA 02138
p: (617) 495-9266

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