Welcome to the Joye Research Group !

Biogeochemistry / Molecular Microbial Ecology

Biogeochemistry is an interdisciplinary science that examines the role of biological processes in mediating the geological and chemical dynamics of the Earth's hydrosphere and lithosphere. The integrative nature of biogeochemical studies requires the application of tools from a variety of scientific disciplines including microbiology, biochemistry, geochemistry, ecology, hydrology, mathematics, physics and many others.

Molecular Microbial Ecology refers to the study of microbial community structure and function. Molecular comes from molecular biology, as in the application of molecular biological techniques (either DNA, RNA or protein based) to tease apart microbial community composition ('who's there?'), genetic potential ('what can they do?) or activity ('what are they doing?').

A fundamental challenge for environmental scientists is to identify and understand the factors that regulate rates of biogeochemical processes. Rates of processes are inherently related to variations in bacterial community composition and/or activity. Evaluating variations in bacterial community structure (i.e., molecular ecology) and in rates of biogeochemical processes (i.e., biogeochemistry) provides the information needed to begin to identify links between 'forcing functions', microbial structure and microbial community function. Such information will permit us to begin to develop mechanistic models of how biogeochemical cycles will respond to global change.

Research conducted by Joye's group examines the biogeochemical cycling of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), dissolved gases (dinitrogen, oxygen, methane and hydrogen), trace metals (iron and manganese), carbon, and sulfur in a variety of systems, ranging from saline lakes to temperate and tropical coastal environments to deep ocean sediments. Several projects include parallel studies of biogeochemical and molecular ecological dynamics with the aim of identifying fundamental links between environmental variables, bacterial community composition and bacterial activity.