Welcome to the Microbial Oceanography Lab at the University of Vienna

Marine microbes are uniquely important to life and form the major pillars of the biosphere. Their unique metabolisms allow marine microbes to carry out many steps of the biogeochemical cycles that other organisms are unable to complete.

Microbial oceanography focuses on deciphering the metabolic activity of Bacteria and Archaea thriving in the open ocean and relating their community composition to the biogeochemical fluxes in the water masses. This requires an interdisciplinary approach linking microbial and molecular ecology to biogeochemistry and to large scale water mass transport studied in physical oceanography.

Find us on Social Media

Our main focus is the microbial oceanography of the deep ocean where the prokaryotic activity is relatively low compared to the euphotic zone. The deep ocean comprises about 70% of the total ocean volume and hence deep-water microbes mediate a substantial fraction of the biogeochemical cycles with thus far unknown metabolic pathways. We develop and improve available methods in molecular biology and biogeochemistry to make them usable in the most oligotrophic parts of the ocean. Then the information from biology and biogeochemistry is linked for a better understanding of how the microbial community might work in the dark ocean.

News

13.07.2021
 

Project ENIGMA (“Redefining the marine carbon cycle”) has been funded by the FWF-1000 Ideas Programme

News
08.06.2021
 

"Life on particles in the surface and deep ocean”

News
31.05.2021
 

Enzyme promiscuity in natural environments: alkaline phosphatase in the ocean

Publication
14.05.2021
 

Potential and expression of carbohydrate utilization by marine fungi in the global ocean

Publication
15.04.2021
 

This publication sheds light on biases involved in estimating the degradability of organic matter in aquatic systems

Publication
02.04.2021
 

We congratulate Daniel Martinovic Saavedra for defending his MSc thesis

News

Video Testimonials

Maria Pinto, PhD Student

Chie Amano, PostDoc

Federico Baltar, Assistant Professor