Erin McParland
Oregon State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science
Ocean microbes drive a large part of Earth's carbon cycle. Algae, bacteria, their predators and viruses form the "microbial loop".
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
chemical oceanography
biological oceanography
marine microbial ecology
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Quantify about 150 small polar extracellular metabolites in seawater across four regimes that differ in biological productivity and oxygen, using new metabolomics methods.
- Build a global chemogeography of exometabolites, a map of dissolved metabolites across ocean regimes, and release it as a public dataset for ocean carbon research.
- Identify which marine microbial groups produce which osmolytes under nitrogen stress by pairing osmolyte measurements in cultures with transcriptomics, which shows which genes are active.
- Measure osmolyte stocks, uptake rates and metabolic fate along a coastal-to-open-ocean Mid-Atlantic transect with mass spectrometry, linked to community gene activity via metatranscriptomics.
More about the research
In this loop, small organic molecules released by one organism feed another. About a quarter to a half of the ocean's yearly plant-like production is recycled this way. Yet most of these molecules have never been identified or measured. As a result, global models treat this fast-moving carbon as a single average number. The lab's projects use mass spectrometry, an instrument that identifies and measures molecules by their mass. With it, they measure individual small molecules in seawater and in microbes. The goal is to tie the carbon budget to specific chemicals and the organisms that make and eat them.
Why it matters
The ocean's fast carbon recycling shapes the global carbon cycle and climate. However, models currently cannot represent the specific molecules involved. Measuring these molecules and their cycling rates could help scientists predict how ocean carbon, nitrogen and sulfur cycles will respond to warming and nutrient changes. The public dataset will serve oceanographers and modelers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Winifred Johnson
University of North Carolina Wilmington, NC·Earth & Environmental Science
Identify which marine microbial groups produce which osmolytes under nitrogen stress by pairing osmolyte measurements with transcriptomics in laboratory cultures.
Henry Williams
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, FL·Microbiology & Immunology
Measure how rising temperature, ocean acidification and nutrient enrichment change the abundance and predation rates of Bdellovibrio-like bacteria and other micropredators, using time-series experiments sampled every 3–6 hours.
Oscar Sosa
University of Puget Sound, WA·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether methane made from methylamine and methane made from methylphosphonate in high-molecular-weight dissolved organic matter carry distinct stable carbon isotope signatures.
The school
Oregon State University: 29 labs on PI Pages, $372M a year on research, 238 research doctorates a year.
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