Rotaru Lab

University of Southern Denmark

By - Amelia Rotaru

Mon defended her PhD

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

By - Amelia Rotaru

Preprint 1st of Nov 2018: Extracellular electron uptake by two Methanosarcina species

My first Ph.D. student Mon Oo Yee just preprinted her first paper: Extracellular electron uptake by two Methanosarcina species. Mon discovered that although two different Methanosarcina could do DIET, they differed in their capability to do electromethanogenesis at a fixed cathode potential. We are excited to hear how the scientific community receives her work.

By - Amelia Rotaru

New paper on odd partnerships fused by conductive particles and workshop in Wageningen

Finally, great to see our BioRxiv paper just published by mBio. Also, SDU Nat’s press officer (Birgitte Svennevig) published a EurekaAlert and a press release on SDU’s website calling attention to our work. This work is a contribution to a project funded by the Danish Research Council in 2013. Wageningen: a sneak peak at conductive particle-mediated syntrophy Just before the paper was released

By - Amelia Rotaru

Preprint from our lab

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

By - Amelia Rotaru

First preprint from our lab

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.