A warm welcome to postdoc Yubin Raut who recently joined the Darwin Group from Jed Fuhrman’s Lab at USC.

Raut joined the Fuhrman lab as a postdoc in July 2021 to contribute to ongoing research projects aimed at establishing a stable biogeographic database of global microbial distribution and abundance patterns from exact amplicon sequence variants sampled from many research cruises spanning across a broad spatial and temporal range.

“During my time in the Fuhrman lab at USC, one of my major projects was helping establish the Global rRNA Universal Metabarcoding of Plankton or “GRUMP” dataset as a composite of ~1,500 samples collected globally over many different oceanographic voyages,” says Raut. “We used a three-domain universal primer set to generate amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) that provide holistic insight into the marine microbial community captured in unfractionated (>0.2 µm), whole seawater samples ranging across the photic and aphotic zone. A central aim of this project is to use a molecular lens the to investigate the biogeography of marine microbes and disentangle ecological interactions and other factors that help govern their community structure.”

“I’m very grateful and excited to join the Follows lab at MIT to continue exploring the “GRUMP” dataset to help better constrain our understanding of marine microbial ecology. One primary focus will be tackling how to use molecular datasets to assess the trait-based ecosystem model Darwin. My initial efforts will be to focus on comparing the marine phytoplankton community between Darwin and GRUMP while trying to assess if there are any significant groups that are “missing” and how we might consider integrating them into Darwin. In the future, I’m also keen on exploring how the picoheterotrophic microbial community and grazers, e.g., zooplankton, compare between Darwin and GRUMP.”

Raut holds a BS (2015) in Biology and Geology with a minor in Oceanography from Texas A&M University. He received his PhD in Ocean Sciences from the University of Southern California in 2021 where he worked with Douglas Capone.

Story Image: In his spare time, Yubin is an avid explorer of the outdoors, especially the ocean. “My main obsession is surfing,” he says. “I also enjoy playing many different sports including basketball, volleyball, ping pong, etc. Lastly, I love food, music, reading, and traveling.”