Project Description:
Marine bacteria play an important role as gatekeepers of carbon storage in the oceans. Understanding their behavior better will allow us to better understand how oceans can continue to take up CO2. Motility is known to confer an advantage to bacteria in localizing resources, but the high energy demands of motility may reduce survival over longer timescales (weeks). This project will test the hypothesis that non-motile or low-motility bacterial strains are better suited for long-term survival under starvation, shedding light on the trade-offs between motility and endurance.
Dive into the microscopic world to uncover the endurance strategies that enable marine bacteria to thrive under the harshest conditions!
Your work will involve:
- Survival Dynamics: Use plating and colony counts to measure and compare the long-term survival of motile and non-motile marine bacterial strains under starvation conditions.
- Energy Trade-Offs: Quantify cellular resource depletion and its relationship with motility over weeks.
- Physiological and Morphological Adaptations: Investigate changes in cell size, flagellar structures, and energy storage using techniques like Digital Holographic Microscopy.
- Literature: Investigate how your experiments relate to observations made in other fields.
Skills Acquired:
- Experimental techniques such as microbial plating, colony counting, and Digital Holographic Microscopy.
- Transcriptomics and molecular biology approaches to study gene expression during starvation.
- Data analysis linking microbial physiology to ecological functions.
Candidate Background:
We seek a motivated student with a background in environmental sciences or engineering, biophysics, microbiology, molecular biology, or marine biology. An interest in bacterial behavior is essential, but experimental experience is not.
Supervisors and Environment:
This project will be conducted in a cutting-edge laboratory focused on marine microbial ecology, with access to advanced imaging tools and opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.
For more information contact:
Dr. Johannes Keegstra, keegstra@ifu.baug.ethz.ch