Javier Rodriguez-Casariego, PhD - Research Assistant Professor, Institute of Environment and Director, CREST-CAChE Metabolomics Facility, Florida International University
Abstract
Reef-building corals inhabit environments that fluctuate rapidly in temperature, nutrients, and other stressors, yet many species display remarkable physiological plasticity. Increasing evidence suggests that epigenetic regulation plays a key role in enabling corals to adjust gene expression in response to environmental change. Combining chromatin proteomics, genome-wide DNA methylation profiling, and transcriptomic analyses we examined how environmental stress reshapes coral regulatory landscapes. Our results show that environmental perturbations such as nutrient limitation, thermal stress, seasonal variation, and changes in symbiotic algae communities are associated with dynamic shifts in histone modifications and DNA methylation patterns across the genome. These epigenetic changes are linked to stress-responsive gene expression programs and physiological acclimatization. In parallel, characterization of coral non-coding RNA repertoires reveals additional regulatory pathways likely involved in post-transcriptional control of stress responses. Together, these findings suggest that interacting epigenetic mechanisms regulate environmentally responsive gene networks, enabling rapid phenotypic plasticity without genetic change. Our work highlights corals as powerful systems for studying epigenetic regulation in ecological contexts and provides new insight into molecular processes that may influence coral resilience under accelerating environmental change.
About Javier A. Rodriguez-Casariego
Dr. Javier A. Rodriguez-Casariego investigates how environmental experience encodes cellular memory and shapes physiological and behavioral resilience in marine organisms. He is a Research Assistant Professor in the Institute of Environment at Florida International University, where he integrates epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics to reveal regulatory mechanisms of neurophysiological and phenotypic plasticity, and long-term responses to environmental stimulus across different models including corals, mollusks, and fish. Dr. Rodriguez-Casariego earned his Ph.D. in Biology from Florida International University in 2021 under Dr. Eirin-Lopez, where he characterized epigenetic mechanisms underlying coral responses to diverse environmental stressors. He then completed an NSF-CREST postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Mark Miller at the Institute of Neurobiology at the University of Puerto Rico and with Dr. Lynne Fieber at the National Aplysia Resource at the University of Miami, followed by an NIH Diversity Supplement to continue his postdoctoral research at the National Aplysia Resource under the supervision of Drs Michael Schmale and Danielle McDonald. Dr. Rodriguez-Casariego is committed to generating open, reproducible multi-omics workflows and collaborative data resources that connect molecular mechanisms to organismal phenotypes across taxa.
Sponsored by the Center for Physical Genomics and Engineering, the Cancer and Physical Sciences Program at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, and NIH Grants T32GM142604 and U54CA268084
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