The presence of microbes in the atmosphere and their transport over long distances across the Earth's surface was recently shown. Precipitation is likely a major path by which aerial microbes fall to the ground surface, affecting its microbial ecosystems and introducing pathogenic microbes. Understanding microbial communities in precipitation is of multidisciplinary interest from the perspectiv...

BACKGROUND Many waste streams have a relatively high vegetable oil content, which is a potential resource that should be recovered. Microbial storage compound production for the recovery of lipids from lipid-water emulsions with open (unsterilized) microbial cultures was investigated in a sequencing batch reactor using a diluted vegetable oil emulsion as model substrate. RESULTS After feeding...

Imaging mass spectrometry combines the power of mass spectrometry to identify complex molecules based on mass with sample imaging. Recent advances in secondary ion mass spectrometry have improved sensitivity and spatial resolution, so that these methods have the potential to bridge between high-resolution structures obtained by X-ray crystallography and cyro-electron microscopy and ultrastructu...

Project Goals: The identification of microorganisms responsible for specific processes remains a major challenge in microbial ecology, one that requires the integration of multiple techniques. We propose to address this goal by developing a new methodology, “Chip-SIP”; combining the power of re-designed oligonucleotide microarrays with nano-scale secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) analy...

Microbial eukaryotes can play prominent roles in the Arctic marine ecosystem, but their diversity and variability is not well known in the ice-covered ecosystems. We determined the community composition of microbial eukaryotes in an Arctic under-ice spring bloom north of Svalbard using metabarcoding of DNA and RNA from the hypervariable V4 region of 18S nrDNA. At the two stations studied, the p...

Any successful strategy aimed at enhancing crop productivity with microbial products ultimately relies on the ability to scale at regional to global levels. Microorganisms that show promise in the lab may lack key characteristics for widespread adoption in sustainable and productive agricultural systems. This paper provides an overview of critical considerations involved with taking a strain fr...

To what extent microbial community composition can explain variability in ecosystem processes remains an open question in ecology. Microbial decomposer communities can change during litter decomposition due to biotic interactions and shifting substrate availability. Though relative abundance of decomposers may change due to mixing leaf litter, linking these shifts to the non-additive patterns o...