Publications related to Physical constraints affecting bacterial habitats and activity in unsaturated porous media – a review

Related publications (30)

Cretaceous Chert-hosted Microfossils Visualized with Synchrotron Ptychographic X-ray Computed Tomography (PXCT)

Silicification of microfossils is an important taphonomic process that provides a record of microbial life across a range of environments throughout Earth history. However, questions remain regarding the mechanism(s) by which silica precipitated and preser ...

WILEY2025

Soil carbon concentration drives anoxic microsites across horizons, textures, and aggregate position in a California grassland

Meret Aeppli

Anoxic microsites, zones of oxygen depletion in otherwise well-aerated soils, serve as prominent controls on several biogeochemical cycles (e.g., carbon, nitrogen, iron). However, relatively little is known about the spatiotemporal distribution of anoxic m ...

ELSEVIER2025

Investigation of microbial community dynamics in soil during variable hydrological forcing

Simiao Wang

Climate change is expected to alter the temporal distribution of precipitation events, leading to prolonged drought periods and an increased frequency of extreme precipitation events. Changes in precipitation pattern will directly affect soil moisture dyna ...

EPFL2024

X-ray chemical imaging for assessing redox microsites within soils and sediments

Meret Aeppli

Redox reactions underlie several biogeochemical processes and are typically spatiotemporally heterogeneous in soils and sediments. However, redox heterogeneity has yet to be incorporated into mainstream conceptualizations and modeling of soil biogeochemist ...

Frontiers Media Sa2024

Fungal community composition predicts forest carbon storage at a continental scale

Nina Marion Aurélia Van Tiel

Forest soils harbor hyper-diverse microbial communities which fundamentally regulate carbon and nutrient cycling across the globe. Directly testing hypotheses on how microbiome diversity is linked to forest carbon storage has been difficult, due to a lack ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Reconstruction and analysis of genome-scale metabolic networks in single organisms and microbial communities

Evangelia Vagena

Microorganisms are a key component in the chain of life. They are essential for agriculture, produce a large proportion of oxygen, and play a central role in the cycle of elements. Microorganisms are widely used in the production of food and alcoholic beve ...

EPFL2024

Global emergent responses of stream microbial metabolism to glacier shrinkage

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Tyler Joe Kohler, Massimo Bourquin, Michail Styllas, Nicola Deluigi

Most cryospheric ecosystems are energy limited. How their energetics will respond to climate change remains largely unknown. This is particularly true for glacier-fed streams, which interface with the cryosphere and initiate some of Earth's largest river s ...

Nature Portfolio2024

The microbial genomics of glacier-fed streams: adaptations to an extreme ecosystem

Massimo Bourquin

Glacier-fed streams are the cold, ultra-oligotrophic, and unstable streams that are fed by glacial meltwater. Despite these extreme conditions, they harbour a diverse and abundant microbial diversity that develops into biofilms, covering the boulders and s ...

EPFL2024

Optimality principles for the analysis of biological processes across scales: From enzyme kinetics to microbiome dynamics

Asli Sahin

Microorganisms are essential for life on Earth, performing key roles in numerous biological processes. Their influence extends across a wide spectrum, from human health and ecological balance to advancements in biotechnology and industrial applications. Th ...

EPFL2024

Water weakening and the compressive brittle strength of carbonates: Influence of fracture toughness and static friction

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël, Barnaby Padraig Fryer

Water is ubiquitous within the pore space of rocks and has been shown to affect their physical and mechanical behaviour. Indeed, water can act on the rock strength via mechanical (i.e., reducing the effective stresses) or chemical effects (e.g., mineral di ...

2024

The cost of adaptability: resource availability constrains functional stability under pulsed disturbances

Hannes Markus Peter

Global change exposes ecosystems to changes in the frequency, magnitude, and concomitancy of disturbances, which impact the composition and functioning of these systems. Here, we experimentally evaluate the effects of salinity disturbances and eutrophicati ...

Amer Soc Microbiology2024

Control of landscape position on organic matter decomposition via soil moisture during a wet summer

Orly Mendoza

Sustainable cropland management requires preservation of soil organic matter (SOM). In spite of in depth understanding gained from ample field and laboratory studies, we have a poor understanding of landscape scale spatial variation of fresh organic matter ...

ELSEVIER2024

Multiscale Porosity Microfluidics to Study Bacterial Transport in Heterogeneous Chemical Landscapes

Francesco Carrara, Jiande Zhou

Microfluidic models are proving to be powerful systems to study fundamental processes in porous media, due to their ability to replicate topologically complex environments while allowing detailed, quantitative observations at the pore scale. Yet, while por ...

Wiley2024

Sulfur-cycling chemolithoautotrophic microbial community dominates a cold, anoxic, hypersaline Arctic spring

Ianina Altshuler

Background Gypsum Hill Spring, located in Nunavut in the Canadian High Arctic, is a rare example of a cold saline spring arising through thick permafrost. It perennially discharges cold (similar to 7 degrees C), hypersaline (7-8% salinity), anoxic (similar ...

BMC2023

Frequent asymmetric migrations suppress natural selection in spatially structured populations

Anne-Florence Raphaëlle Bitbol, Alia Abbara

Natural microbial populations often have complex spatial structures. This can impact their evolution, in particular the ability of mutants to take over. While mutant fixation probabilities are known to be unaffected by sufficiently symmetric structures, ev ...

Oxford Univ Press2023

Spatially Explicit Linkages Between Redox Potential Cycles and Soil Moisture Fluctuations

Andrea Rinaldo, Rizlan Bernier-Latmani, Paolo Benettin, Manon Frutschi, Mitra Asadollahi, Simiao Wang, Filippo Miele

Reduction-oxidation cycles measured through soil redox potential (Eh) are associated with dynamic soil microbial activity. Understanding changes in the composition of, and resource use by, soil microbial communities requires Eh predictability under shiftin ...

American Geophysical Union2023

Industrial Biotechnology Conservation Processes: Similarities with Natural Long-Term Preservation of Biological Organisms

Corinne Scaletta, Lee Ann Laurent-Applegate, Philippe Abdel Sayed, Nathalie Hirt-Burri, Laurent Alexis Clément Vannay

Cryopreservation and lyophilization processes are widely used for conservation purposes in the pharmaceutical, biotechnological, and food industries or in medical transplantation. Such processes deal with extremely low temperatures (e.g., -196 degrees C) a ...

MDPI2023

Global Mapping of Potential and Climatic Plant‐Available Soil Water

Dani Or, Sara Bonetti

The estimation of plant-available soil water (PASW) is essential to quantify transpiration fluxes, the onset of heatwaves, irrigation water management, land-use decisions, vegetation ecology, and land surface memory in climate models. PASW is the amount of ...

2023

Homogeneous Environmental Selection Structures the Bacterial Communities of Benthic Biofilms in Proglacial Floodplain Streams

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Tyler Joe Kohler, Susheel Bhanu Busi, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud, Stylianos Fodelianakis, Massimo Bourquin, Leïla Ezzat, Jade Brandani

Streams draining proglacial floodplains harbor benthic biofilms comprised of diverse microbial communities. These high-mountain ecosystems are rapidly changing with climate warming, and it is therefore critical to better understand the mechanisms underlyin ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

Linking Soil Structure, Hydraulic Properties, and Organic Carbon Dynamics: A Holistic Framework to Study the Impact of Climate Change and Land Management

Sara Bonetti

Climate change and unsustainable land management practices have resulted in extensive soil degradation, including alteration of soil structure (i.e., aggregate and pore size distributions), loss of soil organic carbon, and reduction of water and nutrient h ...

2023