Debora Rodrigues
Clemson University, SC·Microbiology & Immunology
Some metals are vital nutrients while others are toxic, and unlike many pollutants, metals cannot be broken down. They can only be removed or changed into less harmful forms.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Earth & Environmental Science
Engineering
- Topics
fungal microbiome
fungal-bacterial interactions
host-microbiome interactions
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Determine how metals and metalloids affect the diversity and transmission of fungal microbiomes, including endobacteria living inside fungi and exobacteria living outside, for both facultative and obligatory partners.
- Determine how fungal microbiomes help their host tolerate metals by mediating the uptake, transformation and sorption of metal ions, nanoparticles and other metal species.
- Uncover genes and metabolic pathways for metal tolerance and biotransformation using isotope probing, advanced microscopy, spectroscopy, and integrated genomics, transcriptomics and metallomics.
More about the research
Fungi and bacteria often live together and play a key role in transforming and detoxifying metals in soil, yet little is known about how their partnership shapes this process. This collaborative project asks how fungal–bacterial interactions control what happens to metals, aiming to uncover the basic rules that govern fungal microbiomes.
Why it matters
Metal contamination is hard to clean up because metals cannot be degraded. Understanding how fungi and their bacteria transform metals could help engineers control these processes for environmental cleanup and water treatment, and could support biorefining, nanoparticle production, electronics manufacturing, antimicrobial production and medicine.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jessie Uehling
Oregon State University, OR·Microbiology & Immunology
Survey how often bacterium-fungus endosymbioses across Mucoromycota species evade engulfment by amoebae. Use comparative genomics to find shared and differing features in their genomes.
Natasja Van Gestel
Texas Tech University, TX·Ecology & Evolution
Measure how experimental warming with open-top chambers changes net ecosystem carbon exchange along an Antarctic gradient from bare glacier soil to full plant cover, using field gas-exchange measurements.
Christine Goodale
Cornell University, NY·Ecology & Evolution
Use long-term data from four Hubbard Brook monitoring sites to quantify how tree carbon allocation above and below ground has changed with shifts in soil nitrogen and phosphorus and their uptake by plants.
The school
Clemson University: 19 labs on PI Pages, $339M a year on research, 297 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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