Jacob Winnikoff

I am a comparative biochemist interested in how evolution has dealt with conditions we consider foreign, inhospitable, or extreme. The intricate machinery of the cell fundamentally fascinates me and I also see application value in understanding how life adapts to factors like pressure, temperature, and water chemistry.

Though my research projects have been diverse, they share a common thread of approaching marine organisms with analytical chemistry techniques. As an undergraduate, I worked on cyanobacterial secondary metabolite diversity and cellular protectant “osmolytes” in mussels during heat anomalies. During my PhD, I studied deep-sea enzyme and membrane adaptation in ctenophores, ultimately finding a lipid that confers cellular pressure tolerance. Now, as a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow, I am measuring differences in metabolic energy allocation associated with different pressures and temperatures. This work focuses on marine microbes, with a goal of identifying more and less energetically demanding pressure-temperature regimes on ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus. When not doing science, I spend many of my waking hours reading, SCUBA diving, hiking, or riding my bike across Boston.