Royal Society Research Fellow
Environmental microbiology
Royal Society Research Fellow (starting on October 2021)
My career is dedicated to studying how microbial communities establish in soils perturbed either by human manipulation or natural disturbance, specifically methanogens in paddy rice soils, carbon monoxide oxidisers in volcanic soils and antimicrobial resistance in agricultural soils. I use high-throughput sequencing and stable-isotope probing to assess community diversity and function.
My current research in the Murrell lab at UEA involves the isolation of metagenome-assembled genomes from natural gas seeps and their characterisation as players in biogeochemical cycles of the components of natural gases such as propane, methane and ethane.
In my group, I will investigate the importance of microbes in the early establishment of volcanic soils and their impact on the establishment of moss and specifically characterise CO-oxidising microbes, including the Ktedonobacterales. The diversity and ecophysiology of this functional group in the environment are poorly documented and impair our ability to quantify the biological sink for CO and the contribution of microbes to mitigate the atmospheric burden of CO in response to global change.
Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dlddUx0AAAAJ&hl=en