John Casey

Contact information
email: casey26@llnl.gov

 

Education

Ph.D. Oceanography (May 2017). Dept. of Oceanography, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa.

B.S. Marine Biology, B.A. Spanish Language (May 2007). College of Charleston, Charleston, SC.

Research experience and positions held

Postdoctoral Researcher (2020-2022). Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. 

Simons Postdoctoral Scholar (2019-2020). Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. 

Research Affiliate (August 2018-present). School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawai’i, Mānoa, HI. 

Simons Postdoctoral Scholar (2017-2019). Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education, University of Hawai’i, Mānoa, HI. 

Research Technician II, III (2007-2010). Core Flow Cytometry Facility, Marine Particle Imaging Lab, Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, St. Georges, Bermuda.

Research interests

Microbial oceanography, biogeochemical cycles, ecological stoichiometry, biological thermodynamics, modeling microbial metabolism and physiology.

I am interested in the coordination and optimization of cellular scale processes, how objectives - like fitness or entropy production - are influenced by the streams of information between tiers of biological organization, and how all this complexity is imprinted in the genetic code. I enjoy thinking about these layers of biological complexity as they relate to the ecology and biogeochemistry of the microbial world.

Selected publications

1. Casey, J.R., Lomas, M.W., Mandecki, J., Walker, D.E., 2007. Prochlorococcus contributes to new production in the Sargasso Sea deep chlorophyll maximum. Geophysical Research Letters 34, L10604.

2. Casey, J.R., Lomas, M.W., Michelou, V.K., Dyhrman, S.T., Ammerman, J.W., Sylvan, J.B., 2009. Taxon-specific orthophosphate and ATP utilization in the western Sargasso Sea. Aquatic Microbial Ecology 58, 31-44.

3. Fawcett, S.E., Lomas, M.W., Casey, J.R., Ward, B.B., Sigman, D.M., 2011. Assimilation of upwelled nitrate by small eukaryotes in the Sargasso Sea. Nature Geoscience 4, 1–6.

4. Lomas, M.W., Moran, S.B., Casey, J.R., Bell, D.W., Tiahlo, M., Whitefield, J., Kelly, R.P., Mathis, J.T., Cokelet, E.D., 2012. Spatial and seasonal variability of primary production on the Eastern Bering Sea shelf. Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 1–15.

5. Mackey, K., Buck, K.N., Casey, J.R., Cid, A., Lomas, M.W., Sohrin, Y., Paytan, A., 2012. Phytoplankton responses to atmospheric metal deposition in the coastal and open-ocean Sargasso Sea. Frontiers in Microbiology 3, 1–15.

6. Casey, J.R., Aucan, J.P., Goldberg, S.R., Lomas, M.W., 2013. Changes in partitioning of carbon among photosynthetic pico- and nanoplankton in the Sargasso Sea in response to changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation. Deep Sea Research II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 93, 58-70.

7. Wallhead, P.J., Garçon, V.C., Casey, J.R., Lomas, M.W., 2014. Long-term variability of phytoplankton carbon biomass in the Sargasso Sea. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 28, 825-841.

8. Durham, B.P., Grote, J., Whittaker, K.A., Bender, S.J., Luo, H., Grim, S.L., Brown, J.M., Casey, J.R., Dron, A., Florez-Leiva, L., Krupke, A., Luria, C.M., Mine, A.H., Nigro, O.D., Pather, S., Talarmin, A., Wear, E.K., Weber, T.S., 4. Wilson, J.M., Church, M.J., DeLong, E.F., Karl, D.M., Steward, G.F., Eppley, J.M., Krypides, N.C., Schuster, S., Rappé, M.S., 2014. Draft genome sequence of marine alphaproteobacterial strain HIMB11, the first cultivated representative of a unique lineage within the Roseobacter clade possessing an unusually small genome. Standards in Genomic Sciences 9, 632.

9. Casey, J.R., Falkowski, P.G., Karl, D.M., 2015. Substrate selection for heterotrophic bacterial growth in the sea. Marine Chemistry 177, 349-356.

10. Casey, J.R., Mardinoglu, A., Nielsen, J., Karl, D.M., 2016. Adaptive evolution of phosphorus metabolism in Prochlorococcus. mSystems 1, e00065–16.

11. Wilson, S.T., Aylward, F.O., Ribalet, F., Barone, B., Casey, J.R., Connell, P.E., Eppley, J.A., Ferrón, S., Romano, A.E., Turk-Kubo, K.A., Vislova, A., Armbrust, V., Caron, D.A., Church, M.J., Zehr, J.P., Karl, D.M., DeLong, E.F., 2017. Coordinated regulation of growth, activity, and transcription in natural populations of the unicellular nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium Crocosphaera. Nature Microbiology 2, 17118.

12. Casey, J.R., Ferrón, S., Karl, D.M., 2017. Light-enhanced microbial organic carbon yield. Frontiers in Microbiology 8, 2157.

13. Casey, J.R., Björkman, K.M., Ferrón, S., Karl, D.M., 2019. Size-dependence of metabolism within marine picoplankton populations. Limnology and Oceanography 64, 1819-1827.

14. Sosa, O.A., Casey, J.R., Karl, D.M., 2019. Methylphosphonate oxidation in Prochlorococcus supports phosphate acquisition, formate secretion, and carbon assimilation into purine nucleotides. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 85, e000289-19.

15. Wilson, S.T., Hawko, N.J., Armbrust, E.V., Barone, B., Björkman, K.M., Boysen, A.K., Burgos, M., Burrell, T.J., Casey, J.R., DeLong, E.F., Dugenne, M., Dutkiewicz, S., Dyhrman, S.T., Ferrón, S., Follows, M.J., Foreman, R.K., Funkey, C.P., Harke, M.J., Henke, B.A., Hill, C.N., Hynes, A.M., Ingalls, A.E., Jahn, O., Kelly, R.L., Knapp, A.N., Letelier, R.M., Ribalet, F., Shimabukuro E.M., Tabata, R.K.S., Turk-Kubo, K.A., White, A.E., Zehr, J.P., John, S., Karl, D.M., 2019 Kilauea lava fuels phytoplankton bloom in the North Pacific Ocean. Science 365, 1040-1044.

16. Casey, J.R., Follows, M.J., 2020. A steady-state model of microbial acclimation to substrate limitation. PLoS Computational Biology 16(8), e1008140.

17. Beckett, S.J., Demory, D., Coenen, A.R., Casey, J.R., Dugenne, M., Follett, C.L., Connell P., Carlson, M.C.G., Hu, S.K., Wilson, S.T., Muratore, D., Rodriguez-Gonzalez, R.A., Peng, S., Becker, K., Mende, D.R., Armbrust, E.V., Caron, D.A., Lindell, D., Follows, M.J., White, A.E., Ribalet, F., Weitz, J.S., 2021. Diel population dynamics and mortality of Prochlorococcus in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. bioRxiv doi:10.1101/2021.06.15.448546.

18. Mattern, J.P., Glauninger, K., Britten, G.L., Casey, J.R., Hyun, S., Wu, Z., Armbrust, E.V., Harchaoui, Z., Ribalet, F., 2022. A Bayesian approach to modeling phytoplankton population dynamics from size distribution time series. PLoS Computational Biology 18:e1009733.

19. Muratore, D., Boysen, A.K., Harke, M.J., Becker, K.W., Casey, J.R., Coesel, S.N., Mende, D.R., Wilson, S.T., Aylward, F.O., Eppley, J.M., Vislova, A., Peng, S., Rodriguez-Gonzalez, R. A., Beckett, S.J., Armbrust, E.V., DeLong, E.F., Karl, D.M., White, A.E., Zehr, J.P., Van Mooy, B.A.S., Dyhrman, S.T., Ingalls, A.E., Weitz, J.S., 2022. Complex marine microbial communities partition metabolism of scarce resources over the diel cycle. Nature Ecology and Evolution doi:10.1038/s41559-021-01606-w.

20. Casey, J.R., Boiteau, R.M., Engqvist, M.K.M., Finkel, Z.V., Li, G., Liefer, J., Müller, C.L., Muñoz, N., Follows, M.J., 2022. Basin-scale biogeography of marine phytoplankton reflects cellular-scale optimization of metabolism and physiology. Science Advances 8:eabl4930.

21. Smyth, T., Moffat, D., Tarran, G., Sathyendranath, S., Ribalet, F., Casey, J.R., 2023. Determining drivers of phytoplankton carbon to chlorophyll ratio at Atlantic Basin scale. Frontiers in Marine Science 10:1191216.

22. Moore, L.R., Caspi, R., Campbell, D.A., Casey, J.R., Crevecoeur, S., Lea-Smith, D.J., Long, B., Omar, N.M., Paley, S.M., Schmelling, N.M., Torrado, A., Zehr, J.P., Karp, P.D., 2024. CyanoCyc cyanobacterial web portal. Frontiers in Microbiology 15:1340413.