Science Writing | Fact Checking | Microbiology
Research
I am an environmental microbiologist, with research experience in microbial evolution and ecology, biogeochemistry, astrobiology, bioinformatics, and bioremediation. I'm particularly interested in how microbial metabolisms respond to rapidly changing environments.
I received my PhD in Microbiology from the Fournier Lab at MIT, and have done postdoctoral research on PFAS bioremediation at UC Berkeley I am currently a Research Associate in Wetland Soil Biogeochemistry in the Centre for Sustainable Soils at the Lancaster Environment Centre.
Check out some recent research topics and publications below!
Wetland soil microbiogeochemistry
Wetlands play a key role in regulating greenhouse gas emissions. How do pressures from climate change and agriculture affect soil microbial metabolisms in these ecosystems?
Bacterial enzymes for halogenated contaminant biotransformation
How can environmental microbes transform persistent pollutants?
More specifically, how might microbial enzymes degrade toxic halogenated compounds, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)...when microbes have no enzymatic pathways specifically evolved to handle these manmade compounds?
Cyanide is both a potent environmental contaminant and a key molecule for models of the origin of life. But how and when did microbes develop the ability to use or detoxify this toxic compound? Phylogenetics, molecular dating, and ancestral sequence reconstruction can help us peek a few billion years into the past for some answers.
Evolution of microbial cyanide metabolisms
(See more in Schwartz et al, Front. Microbiol. 2023)
Denitrification in subsurface Chloroflexi
Phylum Chloroflexi is a diverse group of environmental bacteria. Some of these microbes can perform denitrification, a core nitrogen cycle pathway that converts fixed nitrogen into atmospheric nitrogen gas (often producing a potent greenhouse gas in the process)...and a few of these bacteria, found deep underground, seem to have evolved some pretty unusual genes for doing this.
(See more in Schwartz et al, MicrobiologyOpen 2022)