Professor Emeritus of Marine Microbial Genetics

Marine Biology Research Division

Douglas H. Bartlett is a professor emeritus of marine microbial genetics in the Marine Biology Research Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in microbial molecular biology at the University of Illinois in 1985.  After several years as a postdoctoral scholar and Research Scientist at the Agouron Institute in La Jolla he assumed a faculty position at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, in 1989, where he now holds the rank of Professor Emeritus.  He served as Chair of the Scripps Department and Deputy Director for Education from 2008 until 2012, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences and Deputy Director for Research from 2019 until 2023.   He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2017. 

Dr. Bartlett has extensive experience in analyses of extremophilic microbial life in the inner space of our oceans.  His research group has pioneered studies of the adaptations that enable deep-sea microbes to live at great pressures, up to and beyond 15,000 pounds per square inch. Much of this work utilizes the tools of genetics, genomics and functional genomics to work through the gene parts lists and wiring diagrams associated with particular aspects of microbial adaptation. 

Current projects in the Bartlett laboratory include single-cell analyses of protein dynamics as a function of pressure, pressure adaptation in deep marine sediments, pressure-temperature-salinity relationships among microbes in the Orca Basin deep-sea hypersaline anoxic brine, and chaotropic salt adaptation.