Chemical communication between marine microbes

Microbial interactions shape community structure and function in the marine environment. Specifically, interactions between phytoplankton and the surrounding microbiome can play a regulatory role in algal blooms, thereby influencing global biogeochemical cycles and the climate. Studies from the past decade highlighted chemical communication as a key aspect in mediating diverse interactions, mostly with prokaryotes. Nevertheless, although prokaryotes are prolific producers of specialized metabolites (also known as natural products), the function of such metabolites in microbial interactions has been largely overlooked. Moreover, these metabolites have been studied mostly for pharmaceutical purposes rather than their role in nature.

Archaea are an important group of prokaryotes in the ocean microbiome, and some are often found in high abundance during or following algal blooms. Still, very few archaea have been isolated, and their specialized metabolism remains mostly unknown, hindering our ability to study their ecological role in nature. 

In this project you will shed light on the production of archaeal specialized metabolites and their involvement in archaea-microalgae interactions. To this end, you will combine diverse molecular biology and analytical chemistry tools to heterologously express archaeal biosynthetic gene clusters, detect and isolate the produced specialized metabolites and conduct diverse bioassays to study their ecological role in the interaction.

Techniques will be
•    Molecular biology (e.g. cloning, heterologous expression)
•    Microbial culturing
•    Chemical extraction, separation and analysis (e.g. LC-MS)
•    Physiological bioassays

Requirements

If you are a Master’s student and interested in working on this exciting and novel research topic with us, you are welcome to contact me to discuss various opportunities. The project (preferably min. 6 months) is scheduled to start in the beginning of 2025.

Contact 

If you are interested in this internship position, please contact Dr Guy Schleyer (guy.schleyer@nioz.nl).