Dr. Dimitri Meier

Projects at DoME:
- Microbial dormancy. Drought survival strategies and resuscitation of desert biological soil crust communities
- Revealing element cycling and microbial survival strategies in naturally occurring ultra-saline coastal microbial mats (New Investigator grant, Community Sequencing Project with Joint genome Institute).
Research Interests:
- Microbial ecology and interactions, differentiation and niche partitioning of microorganisms
- Limits of microbial life and drought survival strategies
- Microbial sulfur cycling and interaction with iron-sulfur minerals
- Big data analysis (“omic”) in environmental microbiology
- Linking culture-independent data approaches to geochemical measurements and cultivation work
Currently used approaches:
- Metagenomics (resolved by population genomes)
- Metatranscriptomics (& proteomics)
- Marker gene amplicon analysis
- Phylogenetic analysis
- Visualization and quantification of microorganims (fluorescence microscopy, various fluorescence in situ hybridization methods