Three Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships awarded to CeMESS

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF) are a postdoc training programme in which the postdoc (fellow) gains additional skills and abilities while working on a specific research project in a new environment, while also transferring their knowledge within their new institution.

Valentin Waschulin, Ruizhe Pei and Tomohisa Sebastian Tanabe will be working with their CeMESS supervisors Dagmar Woebken, Holger Daims and Alexander Loy, respectively, for a 24-month period and have additionally been awarded third-year funding by the University of Vienna for their excellent proposals. In total, 15 fellowships have been awarded to the University of Vienna, resulting in a success rate of 16.13%.

About the projects

• Uncovering the link between bacterial growth and secondary metabolite dynamics in soil biocrusts
  (Valentin Waschulin)

Valentin Waschulin will be working on the project “Uncovering the link between bacterial growth and secondary metabolite dynamics in soil biocrusts” (GROWMETA) in Dagmar Woebken’s group. In this project, he will investigate a desert soil crust model system to determine at what point in their growth cycle bacteria produce secondary metabolites. This will shine a light on the ecological roles of useful compounds such as antibiotics.

• Microbial Interactions: Nitrifiers and their Partners in Complex Wastewater Microbiome
  (Ruizhe Pei)

In his project “Microbial Interactions: Nitrifiers and their Partners in Complex Wastewater Microbiome” (INTERACT), Ruizhe Pei, together with Holger Daims, will explore the governing principles of microbial interactions, focusing on how nitrifiers interact with other microbes using wastewater treatment plants as a model system. They aim to uncover these interactions by applying cutting-edge fluorescence imaging, chemical imaging methods, and stable isotope probing, in collaboration with Michael Wagner (DOME, CeMESS) and Manuel Liebeke (University of Kiel and Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology). With this understanding, they hope to contribute to a deeper knowledge of microbial interactions and more effective nitrogen management in wastewater treatment plants.

• Microbial sulfonolipid biosynthesis and degradation in the human gut
  (Tomohisa Sebastian Tanabe)

In his project,“Microbial sulfonolipid biosynthesis and degradation in the human gut“, Sebastian Tanabe aims to elucidate the mechanism of microbially driven sulfonated lipid biosynthesis and degradation in the human gut. In particular, he will study sulfobacins. These sulfonated lipids are synthesized by intestinal bacteria and can modulate the immune system and reduce intestinal inflammation. They are therefore considered as potential therapeutics for targeted intervention in the increasing number of cases of inflammatory bowel disease. However, the effects of sulfobacins on the gut microbiota, degradation processes, and key enzymes of the microbial biosynthetic pathway are unknown. The ecophysiology of the species driving these processes will be elucidated as a crucial prerequisite for microbiota-oriented interventions.

About the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship

• Read more about the Fellowship:
  https://forschungsservice.univie.ac.at/en/funding/msca-pf/