Current Projects
BEVocean – Bacterial Extracellular Vesicles in the Marine Ecosystem: ecophysiological roles and biogeochemical relevance
This project aims to expand our understanding of extracellular vesicle production by marine bacteria, and answer fundamental questions, such as, what factors influence production of vesicles in the marine bacteria? Do these factors affect also the type of the produced vesicles? What functions bacterial vesicles have in the marine ecosystem?
Duration: 02.03.2026–28.02.2029
Funding: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
PIs: Dr. Eduard Fadeev
Biogeography and Functional Traits of Fungi in the Ocean
This project explores the diversity, global distribution, and ecological functions of pelagic fungi in marine carbon cycling. Although bacteria have long been considered the primary agents of organic matter remineralization, growing evidence reveals that fungi are also widespread in the ocean and actively decompose organic material. This project tackles our limited knowledge of how marine fungi differ from bacteria in their ecological roles, biogeography, and functional capacities. Zihao Zhao will examine which environmental factors shape fungal biogeography, how fungal communities respond—both genetically and functionally—to changing conditions, and how fungal enzymes and proteins are expressed across particle size classes and ocean depths. By integrating amplicon sequencing, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and metaproteomics, the project will generate the first comprehensive global assessment of pelagic fungal diversity and function, deepening our understanding of their contribution to ocean carbon sequestration.
Duration: 01.02.2026–31.01.2029
Funding: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
PIs: Zihao Zhao, PhD
JELLY-BIOME - The role of the microbiome in the life and death of bloom-forming jellyfish
This Slovenian-Austrian joint project aims to elucidate the role of the microbiome in the life and decay of its bloom-forming gelatinous host. Particularly, it will focus on the composition and functional traits of the jellyfish microbiome at the transition from a healthy to senescent stage of the host’s bloom to elucidate the role of the microbiome in the collapse of jellyfish blooms. To tackle this objective, an integrated transdisciplinary approach will be applied – from single proteins to the complex host-microbiome system.
Duration: 01.05.2025–30.04.2028
Funding: Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS)
PIs: Prof. Dr. Gerhard Herndl and Assist. Prof. Dr. Tinkara Tinta
Postdoc in project: Daniel Martinovic-Saavedra, PhD
ATLACODE: Decoding the Ocean Microbiome’s Code in Real Time
National Geographic Explorer Project (2025–2026)
ATLACODE, led by Dr. Valerie De Anda funded by National Geographic Society and Schmidt Ocean Institute RFP - Ocean Exploration & Discovery Program. This initiative supports early-career scientists in leading ship-based research that expands our understanding of the least-explored regions and processes of the ocean.
During the "Search for the Asgard" expedition aboard the R/V Falkor (too) (November–December 2025, South Atlantic Ocean), this project will apply real-time metagenomics to investigate microbial communities living in marine sediments near the coast of Uruguay. These microbes drive essential biogeochemical processes that regulate ocean chemistry and influence the planet’s climate. By sequencing and analyzing environmental DNA directly at sea, the project will transform the vessel into a floating genomic observatory, revealing how microbial life functions, interacts, and adapts in real time, offering new insights into the invisible life that sustains our oceans.
The name ATLACODE reflects Dr. De Anda’s Mexican heritage. It comes from the Nahuatl word ātl, meaning “water” or “ocean,” combined with “code,” representing the genetic code of life, DNA. ATLACODE reflects the project’s mission to decode the ocean’s microbiome with real-time metagenomics to understand how marine microbes sustain life and drive planetary processes.
Duration: 2025–2026
Funding: National Geographic Society and Schmidt Ocean Institute
Principal Investigator: Dr. Valerie Yselle De Anda Torres
Websites: https://sites.google.com/view/valdeanda/ | Searching for the Asgard – Schmidt Ocean Institute
Real-Time Metagenomics: changing the future of ocean exploration
NEREIDES: Neutrally Buoyant Particles in the Deep Sea: Turnover, Origin and Global Impact on the Marine Carbon Cycle – an ERC Advanced Grant project
Export of organic matter produced in the sunlit surface waters into the ocean’s interior removes about one third of the anthropogenically produced carbon dioxide. The amount of organic matter sinking into the deep ocean, however, is not sufficient to support the carbon demand of the heterotrophic food web in the ocean’s interior as revealed by several studies. Consequently, the oceanic carbon budget cannot be closed. Recently, we identified a hitherto unrecognised non-sinking, non-living particulate organic matter (POM) pool in the dark ocean with rather stable concentrations throughout the water column. This particle pool has not yet been considered in the deep-sea carbon budgets. Its origin and fate remain enigmatic as well as its nutritional role for the deep-sea biota. We aim at deciphering the compositional differences between the sinking and non-sinking detrital POM and compare their properties with that of the dissolved organic matter using state-of-the-art methods including proteomics. Specific focus will also be put on the composition and activity of the particle-associated biota in the ocean’s interior. We will analyse, for the first time ever, the composition of the biota and the biogeochemistry of these two classes of detrital particles in the deep North Atlantic. The results of NEREIDES will help elucidating the origin and fate of these enigmatic suspended particles and allow testing a major unresolved aspect in deep-sea biogeochemistry, i.e., whether these suspended particles provide the missing carbon to resolve the current mismatch in our measurements between organic carbon supply and demand of the heterotrophic deep-sea biota. The obtained results will form the base to model the dynamics of the non-sinking particles in the ocean on an ocean basin scale. Thus, NEREIDES will fill a major knowledge gap in the oceanic carbon cycling.
Duration: 5 years (2024-2029)
Funding: Advanced Grant - European Research Council (ERC)
PI: Prof. Dr. Gerhard Herndl
Technician: Theres Koch
Postdoc in project: Kangli Guo, Andrea Malits
Epifluorescence image of a bathypelagic neutrally buoyant detrital particle from 3390 m depth collected at the Charlie Gibbs Fracture Zone, North Atlantic. Scale bar – 100 μm; Hazy areas not large objects but represent backscatter from the edges of the 30 μm filter pores [brackets]. Bochdansky, A.B., M.A. Clouse, G.J. Herndl, 2017: Eukaryotic microbes, principally fungi and labyrinthulomycetes, dominate biomass on bathypelagic marine snow. The ISME J., 11: 362-373