Catherine Larose, Ph.D.

Catherine Larose, Ph.D.

CNRS Institute des Geosciences de l’Environnement

Catherine Larose, Ph.D., has participated in multidisciplinary research, spanning from greenhouse gas emissions to photochemistry, toxicology, environmental sciences, microbiology and climate science, since early in her career. To date, she has published over 65 articles related to biogeochemistry, contaminant cycling and extreme environments (h = 26). She has contributed to advancing research in ecology through the use of metagenomics in low biomass environments by, for example, demonstrating that the functions encoded in microbiomes reflect the environments in which the microorganisms evolved. This allowed her to postulate that genomes contain information on ecosystem forcing that can be used to understand the biotic response to environmental change.

She has also developed and applied metatranscriptomics to demonstrate microbial activity at temperatures below 0°C and was able to uncover active and dynamic community interactions that led to the expression of antibiotic resistance genes when organic carbon concentrations increased. She uses these approaches to study activity, microbial adaptation and ecology in the cryosphere.