I am David Wiener, an EMBO postdoctoral fellow at the Armbrust lab. During my PhD, I focused on understanding the rules behind RNA decay using yeast as a model. However, I realized that laboratory models do not fully recapitulate environmental microbial biology. I arrived at the lab because I am very curious about how gene expression control mechanisms defines phytoplankton’s environmental impact. I am especially interested in the potential role that post-transcriptional regulation could play in determining algae-bacteria interactions. For this, I aim to combine experimental and computational approaches to develop new meta-transcriptomic tools that will allow me to ask these questions on environmental samples.