Fields of interest
The research group works on the interplay between microbial diversity, microbial food webs, and biogeochemical cycles.
Hovedinnhold
The interface between microbiology, molecular biology and biogeochemistry has been characterized as a "crossroad of opportunities" presently offering great challenges and great opportunities to the scientific community. The research group in microbial ecology has been formed to meet this challenge.
The group combines complementary expertise and instrumentation, allowing us to combine specialized techniques (e.g. molecular techniques, flow cytometry, and X-ray micro analysis) with particular scientific questions (related to e.g.diversity, population dynamics, gene dispersal, element cycles) and particular biotopes (marine pelagic food webs, soil microbiology, microbiology of oil reservoirs).
Present basic research focus on:
- the marine pelagic food web
- geomicrobiology and processes in the sea floor and in oil reservoirs
- arctic microbiology and the role of microorganisms in climate change
Our applied research is closely related to the basic research and is at present mainly focussed on oil-related microbiology. Our reserach is however also relevant to pollution, food for commercial marine resources, and harmful algal blooms.
The group has close working relationships organized both trough reserach networks (NORFA, ESF, NSF, EU-NoE, MESOCOSM, Aquacosm) and in the form of reserach projects (EU, RCN).
