Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas at Austin
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas. My research aims to understand the lifestyle of marine bacteria using the most recent “omic”-techniques. More specifically, my current project tries to unravel the metabolic capacities present in bacterial genomes and their metabolic potential. One topic I am working on deals with bacteria enriched during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, addressing the question how bacteria cope with oil contamination.
I am a biologist with a background in molecular biology. More specifically, I graduated in plant genetics and during my PhD I obtained an additional background in microbiology to better understand how microbes and plants interact. My current goal is to gain a better background in bioinformatics to better be able to tackle the research questions I am interested in.
Currently, I want to understand:
What are the microbes that can be found in marine ecosystems?
How can we use “omics” to uncover novel bacterial lineages?
What are their genomic and metabolic features?
Where I come from:
I did my PhD (just finished this year, in 2015) at the Max-Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne. I investigated how rhizosphere and root-bacterial communities interact with Arabis alpina and two Brassicaceae plant species. I worked on 16S rRNA gene community profiling and also isolated numerous bacteria. The research questions of my PhD were (in a simplified way):
How are bacterial communities affected by their surroundings/ what determines how bacterial communities assemble on plant roots
(i.e. plant species, soil type, flowering time…)?
What is the effect of synthetic bacterial communities on plant growth?
Can we harness bacteria to help clean up future oil spills?
Jun 22, 2016 12:46 pm UTC| Science Nature
In 2010 the Deepwater Horizon oil spill released an estimated 4.2 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico the largest offshore spill in U.S. history. The spill caused widespread damage to marine species, fisheries...
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