Laboratory of Microbial Oceanography

The Laboratory of Microbial Oceanography (LOMIC, UMR7621) was created within the Observatoire Océanologique de Banyuls in January 2010. The two cotutelles of this UMR are the University Paris6 (UPMC) and the CNRS. The LOMIC is attached primarily to the Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers (INSU, “Ocean atmosphere” domain) of the CNRS, and secondary to the Institut d'Ecologie et de l'Environnement (INEE) and the Institut des Sciences Biologiques (INSB).

The LOMIC brings together expertise in the fields of marine biogeochemistry, microbial ecology, biodiversity, physiology, OMICs and genetics of model organism to investigate processes carried out by the ocean microbiome in elemental cycles. Ongoing carbon cycle research emphasizes the identification of important routes of carbon fluxes through bacterial communities, with the long-term goal of improving predictions of the fate of carbon in the context of a changing ocean. The study of the functions and diversity of marine microorganisms can also offer interesting applications in the field of biotechnology, for example the production of high value-added molecules or the possibility of using certain microbial functions to degrade pollutants present in the environment. This line of applied research is an integral part of the studies carried out at LOMIC.