Daniella Gat

Weizmann Institute of Science | weizmann · Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Processes influencing the transport of airborne bacterial communities in the atmosphere are poorly understood. Here, we report comprehensive and quantitative evidence of the key factors influencing the transport of airborne bacterial communities by dust plumes in the Eastern Mediterranean. We extracted DNA and RNA from size-resolved aerosols sample...

The microbiome of atmospheric dust events has raised increasing interest in the last decade, resulting in numerous studies that characterized the different parameters affecting the composition of the atmospheric microbiome, that is, the aerobiome. However, less is known about the functional profile of the aerobiome and how it compares with other en...

The diversity of microbes and their transmission between ocean and atmosphere are poorly understood despite the implications for microbial global dispersion and biogeochemical processes. Here, we survey the genetic diversity of airborne and surface ocean bacterial communities sampled during springtime transects across the northwest Pacific and subt...

Atmospheric transport of viable microorganisms can affect the biodiversity and health of global ecosystems. However, the processes influencing the abundance, composition and viability of airborne bacterial communities remain understudied. Using qPCR and high-throughput amplicon sequencing of DNA and RNA extracted from aerosol samples representing v...

Background: Secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) formed from anthropogenic or biogenic gaseous precursors in the atmosphere substantially contribute to the ambient fine particulate matter [PM ≤2.5μm in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5)] burden, which has been associated with adverse human health effects. However, there is only limited evidence on their di...

The atmosphere plays an important role in transporting microorganisms on a global scale, yet the processes affecting the composition of the airborne microbiome, the aerobiome, are not fully outlined. Here we present the community compositions of bacteria and fungi obtained by DNA amplicon-sequencing of aerosol samples collected in a size-resolved m...

Airborne microbial communities directly impact the health of humans, animals, plants, and receiving ecosystems. While airborne bacterial and fungal communities have been studied by both cultivation-based methods and metabarcoding surveys targeting specific molecular markers, fewer studies have used shotgun metagenomics to study the airborne mycobio...

Microbes play essential roles in biogeochemical processes in the oceans and atmosphere. Studying the interplay between these two ecosystems can provide important insights into microbial biogeography and diversity. We simultaneously mapped the microbial diversity of airborne and marine bacterial communities across 15,000 kilometers in the Atlantic a...

The atmospheric microbiome, the aerobiome, represents a complex mixture of suspended microorganisms originating from different environments, e.g. , soil, marine environments, and plants. Aerobiomes sampled around the globe show distinct compositions, yet some common features might be observed. Defining these similarities and differences will contri...

Atrazine is an herbicide and a pollutant of great environmental concern that is naturally biodegraded by microbial communities. Paenarthrobacter aurescens TC1 is one of the most studied degraders of this herbicide. Here, we developed a genome scale metabolic model for P. aurescens TC1, iRZ1179, to study the atrazine degradation process at organism...

The composition of atmospheric aerosols is dynamic and influenced by their emission sources, organic and inorganic composition, transport pathways, chemical and physical processes, microorganisms' content and more. Characterization of such factors can improve the ability to evaluate air quality and health risks under different atmospheric scenarios...

Atrazine is an herbicide and pollutant of great environmental concern that is naturally biodegraded by microbial communities. The efficiency of biodegradation can be improved through the stimulating addition of fertilizers, electron acceptors, etc. In recent years, metabolic modelling approaches have become widely used as an in silico tool for orga...

Microbial communities play a vital role in biogeochemical cycles, allowing the biodegradation of a wide range of pollutants. The composition of the community and the interactions between its members affect degradation rate and determine the identity of the final products. Here, we demonstrate the application of sequencing technologies and metabolic...

Microbially induced CaCO3 precipitation (MICP) via urea hydrolysis is an emerging technique for soil amelioration, building materials rehabilitation and pollutants sequestration amongst other various environmental applications. The successful application of MICP requires the sustainability of the precipitated CaCO3; on which the fate of ammonia, th...

Dust storms transport through the atmosphere microorganisms that can potentially affect human health and the functionality of microbial communities in various environments. Characterizing the dust-borne microbiome in storms of different origin or that followed different paths provides valuable data to improve understanding of global health and envi...

Microbially-induced calcite precipitation (MICP) is an emerging ground-modification technique. This paper presents the results of laboratory experiments that elucidate some biological factors affecting bioaugmentation and biostimulation strategies of MICP. Co-culture experiments suggest that ureolytic bacterium Sporosarcina pasteurii (DSMZ 33) migh...

Microbial-induced CaCO3 precipitation (MICP) via urea-hydrolysis (ureolysis) is an emerging soil improvement technique for various civil engineering and environmental applications. In-situ application of MICP in soils is performed either by augmenting the site with ureolytic bacteria or by stimulating indigenous ureolytic bacteria. Both of these ap...

We present results from experiments of microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) in co-cultures of model bacteria and results of experiments studying the ureolytic potential of native bacterial extracts. The model co-cultures experiments were designed to study possible interactions associated with introduction of exogenous ureolytic bacteria...

Microbial-induced CaCO3 precipitation (MICP) is an innovative technique that harnesses bacterial activity for the modification of the physical properties of soils. Since stimulation of MICP by urea hydrolysis in natural soils is likely to be affected by interactions between ureolytic and non-ureolytic bacteria, we designed an experiment to examine...

Microbial-induced CaCO3 precipitation (MICP) is an innovative technique that harnesses bacterial activity for the modification of the physical properties of soils. Since stimulation of MICP by urea hydrolysis in natural soils is likely to be affected by interactions between ureolytic and non-ureolytic bacteria, we designed an experiment to examine...

Stimulation of ureolytic Microbially Induced CaCO3 Precipitation (MICP) in natural soils is likely to be affected by interactions between ureolytic and non-ureolytic bacteria. In order to study these interactions we performed a MICP experiment in artificial groundwater medium, inoculated with two model bacteria: Sporosarcina pasteurii and Bacillus...