A hearty congratulations to C-DEBI Senior Scientist Steve Finkel on his election to President of the American Society for Microbiology!
The fellowship awards $4,000 to undergraduate, community college, and post-baccalaureate students to perform 10-12 weeks of summer research. Also, awardees submit their research for presentation at ASM Microbe 2019. If their abstract is accepted, they receive up to $2,000 in travel funds to attend the Microbe Academy for Professional Development prior to the meeting and present their research at the meeting. Application Deadline: February 15, 2018.
The Research Capstone Fellowship is available to underrepresented minority students at three different levels: 1) Community college, undergraduate, and post-baccalaureate students; 2) Master’s level and early-graduate students (prior to taking the preliminary exam); and 3_ Doctoral candidates (post-preliminary exam). All Fellows receive up to $2,000 to attend and present at the ASM Microbe Academy for Professional Development (MAPD) and the ASM Microbe Meeting (contingent upon abstract acceptance). Doctoral candidates receive up to $2,000 in additional funding during years two and three of the fellowship to participate in professional development courses/training and/or attend local or national meetings (contingent upon approval of progress report and annual budget plan). Application Deadline: March 1, 2018.
Featuring C-DEBI scientists Julie Huber and Julie Meyer.
Excerpt:
Your aquarium water turns green when you overfeed your fish. When limiting nutrients like nitrates and phosphates are introduced into a body of water, microscopic algae multiply so much that the water changes color. For example, in response to fertilizer runoff, a 2011 cyanobacteria bloom changed the clear waters of Lake Erie into a dark-green soup and forced the nearby city of Toledo into a state of water crisis.
We frequently see what eutrophication looks like and understand how microbes respond to excess nutrients in lakes and coastal areas. A similar microbial bloom is observed when excess nutrients from hydrothermal vents are released on the seafloor. During a submarine volcanic eruption, the microbes living inside the oceanic crust spew out into the water column, along with CO2 and H2S in high concentration. One of the consequences of such changes is a transient phenomenon called “snowblower vents,” hydrothermal apertures that release white flocculent materials resembling snow (For an awesome video, click here). These flocs consist of huge clumps of microbes living chemoautotrophically off CO2 and H2S gases. Who is crazy enough to live inside an active hydrothermal vent and thrive on toxic gases? An article published by researchers at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory addressed this very question by performing detailed molecular analyses on samples from an Axial Seamount eruption.