I am a PhD student working in Dr. Stephan Schmitz-Esser’s lab as a member of the Interdepartmental Microbiology program. My research focuses on the endosymbiotic bacterium Cardinium hertigii which resides in a wide array of insects. Like the more widely-known Wolbachia, Cardinium can cause cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI) where the mating between an infected male and an uninfected female does not produce viable offspring, although the two endosymbionts have evolved the ability to cause CI independently. My current work is part of a collaborative effort with the goal of uncovering the Cardinium genes responsible for causing CI in an insect host by focusing on the interactions between proteins produced by the endosymbiont and those of the insect host. My other focus is the de novo transcriptome assembly of a parasitic wasp infected by Cardinium within a complex rearing system