Environmental Microbiology

We are also interested in the Sonoran Desert and its ecology and using this beautiful setting for authentic classroom research. To this end we have been developing classroom modules for authentic research for students to study this beautiful desert, including environmental microbiomes and community level physiological profiling of microbial sampling. Recently we received an NSF IUSE grant to support some of this work, and the summer 2017 iCURE (interdisciplinary Course Based Undergraduate Research Experience) focused on desert microbiome analysis comparing it to community level physiological profiling as well as biogeochemical properties of the soil. We are recruiting from all STEM majors to develop an interdisciplinary team to study this research issue. Read more about our iCURE projects here.

Recently we published some results from microbiome analysis of the Sonoaran desert and comparison to abandoned mine sites. We found a previously undescribed microbe as well.

We processed Buford The Sandwich in fall of 2016 as a test and discovered that his meaty prokaryotic microbiome was 98% Gammaproteobacteria and his eukaryotic microbiome was 92% Dothideomycetes and 8% Tremellomycetes.