Hello, I'm Kathryn Atherton
- I'm in the Bioinformatics and URBAN programs at BU!
- I'm a member of the Bhatnagar Lab
- I study how urbanization impacts the tree-associated microbiome and how microbes in turn impact the health of trees.
- Fun fact: I love to crochet, sing, and watch sports (Liverpool F.C. are my favorite).
- NEPTUNE: NEtwork PaTterns of Soil Microbiomes in Urban New England
- M-BUDS: MicroBiome Urban Dysbiosis in Street trees
- MEMENTO: Modeling Environmental and Microbial Effects on New England Tree Outcomes
- In progress
- Fun2FITS: Fungi to Function with ITS
- In progress
- PASTR: PArcel Segmentation for Tree Recommendations
- Internship with Speak for the Trees Boston
- A DNA Amplicon Sequence Data Processing and Analysis Pipeline for Environmental Microbiomes: Used in my M-BUDS and MEMENTO projects.
- Fungi are the future: Realizing the potential of fungi in policy
- Strengthening Graduate Education through Solutions-Oriented Partnerships and Interdisciplinary Training
- Reducing Urban Heat Island Effects While Providing Affordable Housing in Bunker Hill
- A two degree temperature increase nearly triples pathogens that cause plant disease
- COVID-19 Mortality Is Worsened By Air Pollution, New Research Finds
- Photosymbiosis reduces the environmental stress response under a heat challenge in a facultatively symbiotic coral: This was my Bioinformatics first year wet lab rotation project, where I helped extract total RNA from corals.
- Symbiosis modulates gene expression of photobionts, but not hosts, under thermal challenge: Just like above, this was my Bioinformatics first year wet lab rotation project, where I helped extract total RNA from corals.
- Association of APOE Genotypes and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: This was my Bioinformatics first year challenge project, where I led an analysis of the relationship of APOE genotypes, the gene primarily associated with Alzheimer's Disease, and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) disease severity.
- Soil microbiome predictability increases with spatial and taxonomic scale: This was my Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) project as a Bioinformatics Research and Interdisciplinary Training Experience (BRITE) intern at Boston University under Dr. Jennifer Bhatnagar and Dr. Colin Averill where I helped fit models of environmental covariates against fungal and bacterial communities at the global scale.