Tromsø, Troms og Finnmark, Norway
I am an environmental microbiologist by heart and my interest lie within the anaerobic degradation of complex organic matter to methane and carbon dioxide in soil and gut ecosystems. Especially the hydrolysis of biopolymers by primary fermenters and the tight associations of syntrophic secondary fermenters with methanogens are in the focus of my research. These processes are catalyzed by a complex microbial community in situ and it is my aim to link DNA or RNA sequencing data to the process data obtained via GC and HPLC analysis of anoxic incubations in order to assign a potential function to the often physiologically uncharacterized microbial diversity in the nature.
Oxidation of atmospheric methane
Department of Ecological Microbiology: Anaerobic degradation processes (depolymerization, fermentation, syntrophy, acetogenesis, methanogenesis) in soil (peat soil, agricultural soil) and gut ecosystems (earthworm gut) Teaching – Microbial physiology + applied and environmental microbiology
Research, supervision of bachelor and master students, teaching at the Department of Ecological Microbiology Design of PCR primers targeting hydrogenase genes
Institute of Molecular Biosciences Design of knock-out mutants in the alginate synthesis pathway of Pseudomonas aeruginosa