School of Biosciences

Research Overview

My research interests are in deep marine biosphere microbial ecology where recent developments have centred on collaborative studies of deep sediment cores taken as part of the International Ocean Drilling Programme (IODP). This research has shown that large numbers of active and dividing prokaryotes can be found in sediments up to 10 million years old and at least 850 m below the sea floor (mbsf). The use of 16S rRNA-based methods to examine the diversity of the prokaryotic community demonstrates that these sediments are dominated by unique groups of so far uncultured Bacteria and Archaea.