Nils Rädecker
Summary
I am a trained aquatic ecologist with a special interest in microbial nutrient cycling and symbiosis. In my research, I use cnidarians as simple model systems to study the role of nutrient cycling in the maintenance and breakdown of photosymbioses. For this I combine the latest OMICS and imaging technologies to study host-microbe interactions in the cnidarian-algal symbiosis. While I have focused on coral bleaching, the disruption of the symbiosis during heat stress, the implications of my work are not limited to the cellular interactions between corals and their symbionts. Rather, I hope to provide a novel perspective on the evolutionary origins of photosymbioses and their ecological collapse in times of global change. Thereby, I hope to identify some of the fundamental processes leading to the establishment of endososymbioses and, thus, the evolution of eukaryotic life itself.