After receiving the great news that the Novo Nordisk Foundation will support research in my lab on electromethanogenesis for the following 5 years, I’ve been interviewed by several journalists about the proposed work. Here are some of the articles they wrote: Major grant for research on microorganisms for producing sustainable biofuels 370 millioner kroner til 38 forskere
News with a slight delay. Our new article “A Win–Loss Interaction on Fe0 Between Methanogens and Acetogens From a Climate Lake” dealing with biocorrosion was published this May in Frontiers in Microbiology. In this work: We studied how microbial communities from climate lake sediments promote microbial-influenced Fe0 corrosion when no other electron donor and acceptors are available. Observed that Clostridia and Methanobacterium were the only groups detected after 11 subsequent transfers solely with zero valent iron (Fe0) as the electron donor. Methanobacterium were ineffective corroders in the absence of the acetogens, although they do not use acetate for methanogenesis. These results…
Ascending Investigator grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation. It is an honor to have received a prestigious Novo Ascending Investigator grant in biotechnology synthesis and production. The Ascending program is aimed at supporting ambitious and original research projects and the continued development of top researchers in the Nordic region. This grant gives me the opportunity to continue my research on determining how electroactive methanogens utilize extracellular electron donors. Several PhD and postdoc positions will be announced soon, and hiring will happen during 2021-2022. If interested in this type of research, please contact me via email. Here is a popular and…
Link to our preprint Our research revealed a new type of microbial interaction on Fe0 between methanogens (positively affected) and acetogens (negatively affected). Methanogens that were otherwise ineffective at metabolizing Fe0-electrons, become effective when co-existing with acetogens. We hypothesize methanogens do so by taking advantage of H2-evolving enzymes released by methanogens. We note the necessity to study the effects of associations between physiological groups on Fe0-corrosion, and not solely the effects of cultured isolates.
At the end of November 2019, Mon successfully defended her Ph.D. She did a beautiful job in front of an expert committee including A/Prof. Annette Rowe (Uni. Cincinnati), A/Prof. Diana Sousa (Uni. Wageningen) and chaired by Prof. Don Canfield (SDU). Also, right before the defense, we got the good news that two articles included in Mon’s thesis were accepted for publication. Two days later, Mon took up a new challenge and started a postdoc at the LBNL (Laurence Berkeley National Labs, CA, USA). She’s now up to other exciting adventures in the environmental microbiology of deep biosphere and rhizosphere.
