Soil microorganisms utilize H2 from the atmosphere so strongly as to comprise its largest sink; however, many fundamental questions surrounding this process remain. Which microorganisms possess the ability to utilize atmospheric H2 at such low concentrations (~500 ppbv)? What, if any, competitive advantage is gained via access to the atmospheric H2 reservoir? Which environmental processes most strongly influence the rate of H2 uptake by these microorganisms?
We hope to contribute to our understanding of these questions with our explorations into the microbiology of H2 uptake at Harvard Forest.
Soils are complex systems, in which physical, geochemical and biological processes interact in aggregate structures situated in dynamically shifting air- and water-filled spaces. It is difficult to adequately sample soil properties and to model processes related to those soil measurements. These challenges were discussed in a stimulating three-day conference on Complex Soils Systems in Berkeley a few…
Congratulations to visiting undergraduate researcher Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Davila on completing and thriving in the demanding eight-week Summer Undergraduate Research in Geoscience and Engineering (SURGE) program! Shersingh came to the Welander lab with a strong background in environmental research (news article) from his home institution of the University of New Hampshire. SURGE is a competitive earth science research and…
Biologist/architect team Tobi Lyn Schmidt and Mike Bogan created a course linking artists, designers, architects, and biologists from the California College of the Arts (CCA) and Stanford University. I served as a postdoc mentor to help inspire and guide the process of cross-hybridizing biology and design (some examples) with three really talented undergraduate CCA students:…
Microbe-mediated soil uptake is the largest and most uncertain variable in the budget of atmospheric hydrogen (H2). In Meredith et al. (2014) in Environmental Microbiology Reports, we probe the advantage of atmospheric H2 consumption to microbes and relationship between environmental conditions, physiology of soil microbes, and H2. First, we were interested in whether environmental isolates and culture collection strains with…
The EAPS department website shares Deepa’s blog about her first the AGU experience. She writes, “Science, nature, life, emergence, and the universe have always inspired my art. And it is the unnecessary beauty of science that makes it deeply mysterious and so inviting to my mind… AGU was an incredible week of reconnecting with friends, advisors, professors, fellow…
I defended my thesis entitled “Field Measurement of the Fate of Atmospheric H2 in a Forest Environment: from Canopy to Soil”. I was honored to receive the 2012 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Prize for my thesis (link to .pdf). It was an incredible feeling to defend. I really enjoyed preparing and giving my thesis defense presentation. It’s not often…
Last week I attended ISME 14 (International Symposium on Microbial Ecology) in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was a delight to see the city – its juxtaposed giant modern, cool, sterile buildings surrounding the historic old city. More of a delight was unexpectedly running into friends from the MBL Microbial Diversity summer school (2010) and realizing they…
At the 2012 EAPS Student Awards Ceremony Deepa Rao received the Christopher Goetze Prize for Undergraduate Research for her thesis entitled : “Exploring the Microbe-mediated Soil H2 sink: A lab-based study of the physiology and related H2 consumption of isolates from the Harvard Forest LTER.” The award recognizes ” innovative experimental design, care in data collection, and sensitive application of…
I presented a poster at the at the Ecology of Soil Microorganisms conference in Prague, 2011 on the role of soil microorganisms in dominating the fate of atmospheric molecular hydrogen (H2). Recent work has linked atmospheric H2 uptake to a novel high-affinity [NiFe]-hydrogenase expressed in active Streptomyces sp. cells, and is perhaps not driven by…