Stable Isotopes

Bacteria responsible for cellulose hydrolysis in situ are poorly understood, largely because of the relatively recent development of cultivation-independent methods for their detection and characterization. This study combined DNA stable-isotope probing (DNA-SIP) and metagenomics for identifying active bacterial communities that assimilated carbon from glucose and cellulose in Arctic tundra microcosms. Following DNA-SIP, bacterial fingerprint analysis of gradient fractions confirmed isotopic enrichment.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1462-2920.12507/full

Kirsten Hofmockel is an associate professor in the Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology Department at Iowa State University.  She directs the Microbial Ecology Laboratory, which focuses on connecting microscale mechanism to ecosystem-scale biogeochemical processes.
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