Founded in 2019, the BLUE Lab (Biomes of Littoral and Urban Ecosystems) studies how urbanization influences coastal ecosystems, focusing on the impacts of urban runoff and other human-derived inputs on microbial communities using integrated genomics and ecological approaches.

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The lab is located within California State University San Marcos, a primarily undergraduate institution. Therefore, field work, sample isolation and processing, next-generation sequencing, and bioinformatics pipelines are all performed by outstanding CSUSM undergraduate students.