Katy Christi

I completed my undergraduate degree in Aquaculture and honours in Microbiology at JCU in Townsville and became a lab technician at JCU in Biomedicine/Veterinary Science. I missed research so I turned towards a PhD. I moved to Sydney and I am now completing my PhD in marine microbiology.

Research Project: Investigating genes linked to symbiosis between marine bacteria and their algal hosts

Genetic manipulation of marine bacteria is significantly less efficient than in model organisms like E. coli, due to several technical bottlenecks. I evaluated different plasmid transformation methods for a bacterial symbiont of a red seaweed, and I'm now using these tools to investigate the role of specific bacterial genes in symbiosis.

Supervisors: Suhelen Egan and Torsten Thomas