Sara Beier

Research interests

My research focuses on the dynamics of bacterial gene activity over space and time and on the niches that different bacterial taxa occupy during certain processes. I am specifically interested in processes involved into carbon and iron cycling in marine environments to unravel the coupling between those two cycles, which has a major impact on the CO2 budget of the world’s oceans.
For this purpose I will target expression patterns of mRNA as well as detect specific active enzymes in natural environmental systems and chemostat or batch-culture experiments. Activity patterns will be identified by using a meta transcriptomic approach, specific amplification of mRNA and quantification of transcribed and active enzymes by fluorogenic methods.

project: BACCIO

Educational background

2002-2003: Diploma thesis, Max Planck Institute for Limnolgy  (field station Schlitz)
2003-2006: research assistant, Max Planck institute for Limnology (Plön) / Unversidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
2006-2010: PhD, Uppsala University, Dept. of Ecology and Genetics/Limnology
2011-present: Postdoc, CNRS/UPMC (Banyuls-sur-mer)

Publications

Beier, S., K. P. Witzel and J. Marxsen (2008). Bacterial community composition in central European running waters examined by temperature gradient gel electrophoresis and sequence analysis of 16S rRNA genes. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 74(1): 188-199.

Eiler, A., S. Beier, C. Säwström, J. Karlsson and S. Bertilsson (2009). High ratio of bacteriochlorophyll biosynthesis genes to chlorophyll biosynthesis genes in bacteria of humic lakes. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 75(22): 7221-7228.

Beier, S., O. S. Kim, P. Junier, S. Bertilsson and K. P. Witzel (2010). Betaproteobacterial ammonia oxidizers in root zones of aquatic macrophytes. Fundamental and Applied Limnology 177(4): 241-255.

Peter, H., S. Beier, S. Bertilsson, E. S. Lindström, S. Langenheder and L. J. Tranvik (2011). Function-specific response to depletion of microbial diversity. ISME J 5(2): 351-361.

Beier, S., C. M. Jones, V. Mohit, S. Hallin and S. Bertilsson (2011). Global phylogeography of chitinase genes in aquatic metagenomes. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 77(3): 1101-1106.

Beier, S. and S. Bertilsson (2011). Uncoupling of chitinase activity and uptake of hydrolyses products in freshwater bacterioplankton. Limnology and Oceanography 56(4):1179-1188.