Curriculum vitae

(Updated 7/1/2023)

Correspondence

Biochemical and Biophysical Group
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
7000 East Avenue
Livermore, CA 94550

Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education
School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology
University of Hawai`i, Mānoa
1950 East-West Road
Honolulu, HI 96822

Email: jrcasey at mit dot edu

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 oceans.

Education

Ph.D. Oceanography (May, 2017) Dept. of Oceanography, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawai`i, Mānoa, Honolulu, HI. Advisor: David M. Karl Dissertation

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

Research Experience and Possitions Held

Postdoctoral Researcher (September, 2022 - present) Biochemical and Biophysical Group, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA.

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

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

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

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

Intern (August 2005 – January 2006). Research Experience for Undergraduates, Bermuda Biological Station for Research, St. Georges, Bermuda.

Intern (June 2004 – July 2004). Transects Program, Skidaway Institute of Oceanography/College of Charleston, Charleston, SC.

Research Assistant I (October 2003- March 2004). Dept. of Microbiology, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC.

Refereed Scientific 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 Kīlauea 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, 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., Muller, C.L., Munoz, 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.

Seminars, Symposia, Workshops, and Abstracts

  1. Casey, J.R., Sancho, G., Zooplankton distribution across the South Atlantic Bight. (College of Charleston, Research Poster Session, 2006)

  2. Casey, J.R., Lomas, M.W., Mandecki, J., Walker, D.E., Nitrate uptake by an uncultured Prochlorococcus population from the deep chlorophyll maximum in the Sargasso Sea. (College of Charleston, Research Poster Session, 2006)

  3. Casey, J.R., Lomas, M.W., Walker, D.E., Taxon-specific nitrogen and carbon uptake rates in marine cyanobacteria. (ASLO/AGU Ocean Science Meeting 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii)

  4. Lomas, M.W., Casey, J.R., Mandecki, J., and Walker, D.E., Taxon-specific carbon and nitrogen uptake rates in natural populations of Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus. (ASLO Summer Meeting 2006, Victoria, BC.)

  5. Lomas, M.W., Sedwick, P.N., Casey, J.R., Does iron availability control new production by Prochlorococcus in subsurface waters in the Sargasso Sea? (ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting 2007, Santa Fe, NM)

  6. Casey, J.R., Lomas, MW., Michelou, V., Dyhrman, S., Ammerman, J., Sylvan, J., Taxon-specific orthophosphate and ATP uptake in the Western Sargasso Sea. (ASLO/AGU Ocean Science Meeting 2008, Orlando, Florida)

  7. Lomas, M.W., Ward, B., Casey, J.R., Eukaryotes dominate new production in the Sargasso Sea. (AGU Fall Meeting 2010, San Francisco, CA)

  8. Casey, J.R., Lomas, M.W., Aucan, J.P., Interannual dynamics of carbon partitioning within the Sargasso Sea picoplankton assemblage. (ASLO/AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting 2010, San Juan, Puerto Rico) * Poster Award

  9. Casey, J.R., Björkman, K.M., Karl, D.M., Grabowski, E.M., Karl, D.M., Hot-PIE! A new look at primary productivity size spectra. (ASLO/AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting 2014, Honolulu, HI)

  10. Casey, J.R., Bidigare, R.R., Karl, D.M., Photorespiration and LMW organic acid cycling at Station ALOHA. (ASLO/AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting 2014, Honolulu, HI)

  11. Lomas, M.W., Bell, D.W., Casey, J.R., Terpis, K.X., Martiny, A.C., Controls on cell quota and elemental ratio variability in natural marine phytoplankton populations. (ASLO/AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting 2014, Honolulu, HI)

  12. Casey, J.R., Ecological applications of flux balance analysis. (Society for Biological Engineering 2014, Göteborg, Sweden)

  13. Casey, J.R., Follows, M.J., Jahn, O., Ji, B., Shaoie, S., Mardinoglu, A., Sarathi Sen, P., Nielsen, J., Karl, D.M., A Prochlorococcus proving ground for constraint- based metabolic modeling and multi-‘omics data integration. (ASLO/AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting 2016, New Orleans, LA)

  14. Casey, J.R., Falkowski, P.J., Karl, D.M., Substrate selection for heterotrophic growth. (The Ocean and the Evolution of Earth’s Biogeochemical Cycles 2016, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ)

  15. Casey, J.R., Karl, D.M., Collimation of transcriptional noise by a cyanobacterial metabolic network. (Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology 2016, New York, NY)

  16. Casey, J.R., Mardinoglu, A., Nielsen, J., Karl, D.M., Towards metabolic flux models of marine microbial communities. (Simons Foundation: Modeling Marine Microbial Communities and Biogeochemical Cycles 2017, New York, NY)

  17. Casey, J.R., Müller, C.R., Pangenome-scale metabolic network reconstruction of Prochlorococcus. (ASLO/AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting 2018, Portland, OR)

  18. Casey, J.R., Towards a mechanistic model of marine microbial community metabolism. (SOEST Department of Oceanography Seminar, 2018, Honolulu, HI) *Invited

  19. Casey, J.R., Müller, C.R., Follows, M.J., Simulations of Prochlorococcus growth and metabolism in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. (Simons Collaboration on Computational Biogeochemical Modeling of Marine Ecosystems Annual Meeting, 2018, New York, NY)

  20. Casey, J.R., Follows, M.J., Towards physiological adaptations in Flux Balance Analysis. (Simons Foundation: Macromolecular Modeling Workshop, 2019, Boston, MA)

  21. Casey, J.R., Müller, C.L., Bien, J., Nielsen, J., Karl, D.M., Follows, M.J., Simulating marine microbial growth and metabolism. (Biofuels Scientific Focus Area Meeting, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 2019, Livermore, CA) *Invited

  22. Vallino, J.J., Casey, J.R., Symposium: Cellular-scale Processes. (Simons Collaboration on Computational Biogeochemical Modeling of Marine Ecosystems Annual Meeting, 2019, New York, NY)

  23. Casey, J.R., Follows, M.J., A model of adaptive nutrient transport. (Simons Collaboration on Computational Biogeochemical Modeling of Marine Ecosystems Annual Meeting, 2019, New York, NY)

  24. Casey, J.R., Metabolic and Physiological Modeling. (Simons Collaboration on Computational Biogeochemical Modeling of Marine Ecosystems Annual Meeting, 2020, remote)

  25. Casey, J.R., Boiteau, R.M., Engqvist, M.K.M., Finkel, Z.V., Li, G., Liefer, J., Muller, C.L., Munoz, N., Follows, M.J., Pangenome-scale simulation of growth, metabolism and physiological acclimation of Prochlorococcus strainss across a meridional transect. (Simons Collaboration on Computational Biogeochemical Modeling of Marine Ecosystems Annual Meeting, 2020, remote)

  26. Casey, J.R., Boiteau, R.M., Engqvist, M.K.M., Finkel, Z.V., Li, G., Liefer, J., Muller, C.L., Munoz, N., Follows, M.J., Simulating microbial growth, metabolism and physiology. (Simons Collaboration on Computational Biogeochemical Modeling of Marine Ecosystems Annual Meeting, 2021, remote)

  27. Casey, J.R., Genome-scale constraint-based simulations of microbial metabolism and physiology. (Ocean Carbon Biogeochemistry Scoping Workshop: Laying the foundation for a potential future BioGeoSCAPES program, 2021, remote) *Invited

Research Grants

Scholar – Simons Foundation (#549894): Simons Collaboration on Computational Biogeochemical Modeling of Marine Ecosystems (2017-2020). 341,521 USD

Fellow – Swedish Research Council/National Science Foundation: Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (2013-2014). 21,000 USD

Fellow – National Science Foundation: Graduate Research Fellowship Program (2010-2013). 134,000 USD

Fellow – National Science Foundation: Research Experience for Undergraduates (2005)

Peer Review Contributions

Applied and Environmental Microbiology Aquatic Microbial Ecology
Continental Shelf Research
Deep Sea Research
eLife
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment
Flanders Research Foundation (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek)
Frontiers in Marine Science Geophysical Research Letters
ISME Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
Journal of Marine Systems
Journal of Plankton Research
Limnology and Oceanography
Marine Biology
mSystems
National Science Foundation Nature Communications Nature Geochemistry npj Microbiome Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Progress in Oceanography Spectrum

Professional Societies

American Society of Limnology and Oceanography
American Society of Microbiology