MicroLab@Bristol

Microlab@Bristol

Studying microbial life in extreme cryo-environments

MicroLab@Bristol employs a range of laboratory, field and modeling techniques to study how life excels in extreme cryo-environments and its role in globally relevant processes. We also work closer to home on several marine and freshwater topics.

Some current projects

iDAPT: examining the role of the cryosphere in driving one of the biggest transitions in Earth’s history – the evolution of land plants.

Supraglacial carbon cycling: using field data to model Greenland Ice Sheet glacier algal blooms and their contribution to global carbon cycling.

Smart Catchment Management: using machine learning to model Cyanobacterial metabolite production blooms in freshwater reservoirs.

Photophysiology: investigating the dynamics and variety of the photosynthetic mechanisms in snow and glacier algae.

MicroLab@Bristol on the road

Take a look at some of our recent field trips

Microlab@Bristol News

Nov 22: New paper out from MicroLab@Bristol in Trends in Plant Sciences on the origin and early evolution of plants

Mar 22: First R&D trip over to Photon Systems Instruments in the Czech Republic to design our iDAPT project “photosynthetron” for novel field measurements of microbial communities in glacial environments

Feb 22: Two new papers out with MicroLab@Bristol contributions – one by Alex Holland on nitrogen speciation during snowpack melt in Greenland, the other by Tris Irvine-Fynn on Greenland bare ice albedo

Dec 21: Jaz Millar accepts 3-year PDRA position with MicroLab@Bristol on the Leverhulme Trust funded iDAPT project.

New Microlab@Bristol paper in Frontiers in Plant Science, shows how the cellular nutrient content of glacier algae deviates from Redfield stoichiometry and is likely an adaptation to surface ice conditions

Another contribution from Microlab@Bristol to a great Nature Comms paper on the storage and export of microbes across the Western Greenland Ice Sheet.

New paper out in Nature Communications from the Black&Bloom (and now Microlab@Bristol) team showing how mineral phosphorus exerts bottom-up control on Greenland Ice Sheet glacier algal blooms

MicroLab@Bristol awarded Jean Golding Institute seed corn funding to apply convolutional neural networks to problems of environmental monitoring

MicroLab@Bristol is recruiting for both a 2.5 month research assistant role on our JGI funded machine learning project, AND a Cabot Masters by Research student on the same topic (same person could bag both!)

Alex Bowles accepts 3-year postdoc position with MicroLab@Bristol on the Leverhulme Funded iDAPT project.

Emily Broadwell begins her PhD with Microlab@Bristol, heading straight into the realm of algal culturing! Read here about her first few weeks…

We are recruiting a 3-year genomics/bioinformatics PDRA on our Leverhulme Trust funded iDAPT project. See here for full job details. Deadline is 25th October.