Assistant Professor
Biology Department
Vassar College
Olmsted Hall 313
Phone: 845-437-5266
joschwarz at vassar dot edu

I am interested in coral symbiosis, which is arguably one of the most powerful collaborations in the biological world. Corals are animals that host unicellular photosynthetic algal symbionts. The symbionts produce and transfer food to the coral and they stimulate the production of coral skeleton. The cumulative effect is profound: corals grow at rates sufficient to form both the actual rock and the ecological foundation to support the hundreds of species that comprise coral reef ecosystems.

How is this symbiosis regulated? How do host and symbiont co-exist in a stable state? Currently I am working to identify the “transcriptome” of the early stages of the symbiosis using DNA microarrays to identify genes that are induced or repressed during the onset of the symbiotic union. Because corals are difficult to rear in the lab, I am using a more tractable model system (the sea anemone Aiptasia pallida), which can be reared quite happily in seawater tanks in the lab. Together with collaborators, we have sequenced 13,000 ESTs from a large insert cDNA library, and I am designing gene expression microarrays from these sequences.

Since coming to Vassar, my students have expressed great interest in studying how different environmental stressors produce a coral bleaching response. Stephen Evans designed and implemented a behavioral assay to assess the large-scale response to environmental stressors. He and Annika O’Dea are examining physiological responses to two different environmental stressors: heavy metals and thermal stress. They are assessing photosynthetic rates of the symbionts, and extent of the bleaching response. Lisl Esherick is examining the underlying gene expression patterns in these same anemones, to determine whether the stressors elicit the same, or distinct, transcriptomic responses. Nick Hebert and Shirley Shangguan are getting my lab up to speed on genotyping the symbionts living inside the hosts. We just ordered 18S primers for PCR.

For more pdfs of some of my research papers, or more info on my research interests, visit my research page

My teaching goals include working with students to become integrative thinkers of biology. This includes not only integration from molecular to evolutionary scales, but also integration between biological and computational knowledge. In my Genomics class, students consider genomic biology from microbes to humans, learn how to employ bioinformatic tools to address biological question, and engage in original research that contributes to the body of scientific knowledge. In the advanced Bioinformatics class, which I teach with Marc Smith from Computer Science, we aim to bring biology and computer science students together to teach each other and to develop challenging projects that utilize existing and self-created research tools. The student work in both of these classes has motivated summer URSI research projects.

For more information about the courses I teach, please visit my Courses page.

One of my biggests interests is in working to develop a community of faculty from small colleges who would like to incorporate high-throughput genomic and bioinformatic approaches into their teaching and research. Dr. Erica Crespi and I have worked with faculty from Williams, Carleton, Barnard, and Columbia to bring “Big Science” to small colleges. We have received funding through the Teagle Fresh Thinking Grant program to develop Genomic-based curricula and research projects for undergraduate school faculty and students Bringing Big Science to Small Colleges: A Genomics Collaboration