Microbial Growth and Carbon Use Efficiency in Soil
Duration of contract: 3 years
Planned starting date: November 2023 - October 2024
Place of work: University of Vienna
Main supervisor: Andreas Richter (CV | Lab Homepage)
Supervision team: Matthias Horn, Christina Kaiser
This position has been filled.
Project description:
The Postdoc will oversee all soil-related experiments in the 'Fundamental Principle of Microbiome Dynamics' project. Their responsibilities will encompass designing and executing soil experiments related to principles of growth and response to perturbations across different scales, ranging from synthetic (minimal) communities to mesocosms and field-scale investigations. Growth measurements in these experiments, as well as in samples taken from experiments with activated sewage sludge and mouse gut microbiomes, will be conducted by tracing stable-isotope labelled substrates in specific biomarkers like DNA, RNA, lipids, and proteins, focusing on taxon-specific growth and turnover rates using quantitative stable isotope probing techniques based on 18O and 2H. The Postdoc will receive support from sequencing and stable isotope facilities.
Co-supervision of a PhD student in WP 7.1, who is studying growth and growth yield relationships from metagenomic datasets, as well as collaboration with three other Postdocs in WP 7.2, WP 7.3 (focused on murine models for the gut microbiome and activated sludge, respectively), and WP 7.3 (theoretical aspects of growth, interaction, and perturbations in microbiomes) will be a key part of this role.