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Rosie Alegado
Director, Ulana ʻIke Center of Excellence; Associate Professor, Dept of Oceanography; C-MORE; Sustainability Faculty
Education
PhD Microbiology & Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine
BS Biology, Minor in Environmental Health & Toxicology, Massachusettes Institute of Technology
Head shot image of Rosie Alegado
Email: rosie.alegado@hawaii.edu
Phone: (808) 956-6859
Fax: (808) 956-3014
Address:

2525 Correa Road, HIG 211
Honolulu, HI 96822

Rosie Alegado started as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Oceanography and the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in August 2013.

The focus of Rosie’s research is to understand how bacteria have influenced the evolution of animals and how these interactions impact their ecosystem. Her approach is to study the interaction between choanoflagellates, heterotrophic nanoflagellates which are the closest living relatives of animals, and their microbial community. She has established the colonial choanoflagellate Salpingoeca rosetta and its prey bacterium Algoriphagus as a new system in which to test hypotheses about the evolution of interkingdom signaling.

Other current research projects include:

1. Exploring bacterial outer membrane vesicles in interkingdom signaling in a variety of animals and ecological contexts.

2. Investigating impact of bacterial sulfonolipid/sphingolipid interkingdom signals on community dynamics

a. modeling changes in microbial community structure under defined nutrient regimes

b. connect activity of specific microbial assemblages with metabolic and geochemical processes

3. Define the microbial biogeography of Native Hawaiian fishpond ecosystems using metagenomic approaches

4. Combine models on community dynamics with empirical data on microbial metagenomics of Native Hawaiian coastal ecosystems to estimate the impact of land use on shifts in microbial activity.

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