Year: 2017

News

Marburg spotlight on microbiology

Post author By Amelia Rotaru
Post date December 5, 2017

On November 23rd, I gave an invited talk for the graduate schools of Microbiology at the Max Planck Institute of Terrestrial Microbiology, the Philips University Marburg and the University of Tuebingen.

It was an excellent meeting covering diverse aspects of microbiology, especially structural and molecular microbiology. It was wonderful to be once again in Marburg.

Here is the flyer for the meeting where you can see the line up of speakers selected by the students for the students: Neu Flyer Spotlight 03.11.2017

News Research

Preprint from our lab

Post author By Amelia Rotaru
Post date November 4, 2017

We discovered that Baltic Sea consortia rich in Geobacter and Methanosarcina carried out syntrophic acetate oxidation (SAO) mediated by conductive particles.

It’s a really exciting finding not only because it is of importance to our understanding of the iron the methane cycles but also because:

it raises questions how anthropogenic discharge of conductive particles (from agriculture, forestry etc) affects methane emissions
it can explain the presence of electrogens like Geobacter in the methanogenic zone
it can explain isotope ratios characteristic of CO2 reductive methanogenesis in deep sediment layers where Methanosarcina (an acetoclastic methanogen) is abundant
it is the first detailed description of a conductive particle-mediated SAO in consortia from sediments
it is the first NanoSIMS description of a Geobacter-Methanosarcina consortium

We enjoyed doing the work and hope the scientific community will receive it with excitement.

Tags conductive particles, Direct interspecies electron transfer, Geobacter, Methanosarcina, syntrophic acetate oxidation

News

Marburg Survival Artists

Post author By Amelia Rotaru
Post date October 16, 2017

On the 9th of October Amelia gave a talk about syntrophic acetate oxidation at the Survival Artist workshop in Marburg.

The list of speakers was incredible for anyone interested in interspecies interactions and not only.

Survival Artists 2017 Flyer – neu 29.Sept

Very thankful to Andreas Brune for the invite. Hoping to get more opportunities for collaborations and discussion with scientists at MPI Marburg in the near future.

News Research

First preprint from our lab

Post author By Amelia Rotaru
Post date October 16, 2017

We were surprised to discover that Methanosarcina reduced mobile and toxic uranium (VI) to less mobile and less toxic uranium (IV).

For now, you can find a preprint of this paper on Biorxiv: Potential for Methanosarcina to contribute to uranium reduction during acetate-promoted groundwater bioremediation

Will keep you updated.

Tags Bioremediation, Methanosarcina, Rifle, Uranium

News

The electromicrobiome of oxygen minimum zones and its biogeochemical significance

Post author By Amelia Rotaru
Post date September 9, 2017

Oona presented some of her work at the Goldschmidt conference in Paris, and at the workshop in marine geomicrobiology in Sandbjerg. Oona got valuable feedback during the poster sessions at these two events.

Here is Oona’s abstract: