NERC-funded Postdoc

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I was a PhD student in the Lehtovirta-Morley lab from 2018 to 2023. I studied the effects of methane, alcohols and copper on ammonia-oxidising archaea. I did my undergraduate and first Master’s degree in Agrobiology/Agricultural Engineering at Mendel University, Brno, Czech Republic and my second Master’s degree in Biology and Chemistry of Soil and Water/Earth and Environment at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

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Identifying novel microbial drivers to mitigate atmospheric methane emission 

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Ammonia-oxidising archaea (AOA) are widespread organisms present in terrestrial and marine environments. They are responsible for the first step of nitrification, the oxidation of ammonia to nitrite. This way they contribute to the global nitrogen biogeochemical cycle and affect the production of greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, nitrate leaching and eutrophication of water bodies. Ammonia monooxygenase (AMO) is the key enzyme in ammonia oxidation, catalysing the oxidation of ammonia to hydroxylamine. This enzyme is very similar to particulate methane monooxygenase, an enzyme found in methanotrophs, which oxidises methane to methanol. In my PhD, we were able to demonstrate that both, methane and methanol are competitive inhibitors of the archaeal ammonia monooxygenase, and we showed the effect of methane and methanol on the proteome of 'Ca. N. franklandus' (Oudova-Rivera et al., 2023). In my Postdoc, I'll continue to study the role of ammonia oxidisers in methane oxidation and its implications for the environment.

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