Abiel Kid­ane

Trichodesmuim colony
Trichodesmuim colony

Department of Biogeochemistry

MPI for Marine Microbiology
Celsiusstr. 1
D-28359 Bremen
Germany

Room: 

3200

Phone: 

+49 421 2028-6050

Abiel Kidane

Main re­search In­terest:

Metals are of­ten found in trace amounts in aquatic en­vir­on­ments, where they play a key role in all ma­jor biogeo­chem­ical cycles. The avail­ab­il­ity of metals to mi­croor­gan­isms is a cru­cial factor that con­trols both the mi­cro­bial com­munity com­pos­i­tion and their func­tion­al­ity within a given en­vir­on­ment. This in­cludes en­vir­on­ments where mi­croor­gan­isms play sig­ni­fic­ant roles in global car­bon (C) and ni­tro­gen (N) cyc­ling.

Even in liv­ing cells, metals oc­cur in trace amounts, but they have sig­ni­fic­ant im­pacts on cel­lu­lar meta­bol­ism, growth, and activ­ity. Un­der­stand­ing how single cells in the en­vir­on­ment reg­u­late their metal up­take and how metal avail­ab­il­ity af­fects their activ­ity are es­sen­tial ques­tions in com­pre­hend­ing how metals shape mixed mi­cro­bial com­munit­ies.

The primary goal of my Ph.D. pro­ject is to in­vest­ig­ate mi­cro­bial pro­cesses at the single-cell level, par­tic­u­larly in re­la­tion to trace metal avail­ab­il­ity, across a di­verse range of en­vir­on­ments. These en­vir­on­ments span from fresh­wa­ter to sea­wa­ter and from an­oxic to oxic hab­it­ats.

 
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