Tess Hutchinson

Monash University (Australia) · School of Chemistry, Clayton

Microbialites—carbonate structures formed under the influence of microbial action —are the earliest macroscopic evidence of life. For three billion years, the microbial mat communities responsible for these structures fundamentally shaped the biogeochemical cycle of Earth. In photosynthetic microbial communities, light energy ultimately drives prim...

In soil ecosystems, obligately aerobic bacteria survive oxygen deprivation (hypoxia) by entering non-replicative persistent states. Little is known about how these bacteria rewire their metabolism to stay viable in these states. The model obligate aerobe Mycobacterium smegmatis maintains redox homeostasis during hypoxia by mediating fermentative hy...

Dihydrogen (H 2 ) is an important intermediate in anaerobic microbial processes, and concentrations are tightly controlled by thermodynamic limits of consumption and production. However, recent studies reported unusual H 2 accumulation in permeable marine sediments under anoxic conditions, suggesting decoupling of fermentation and sulfate reduction...

The microbial community composition and biogeochemical dynamics of coastal permeable (sand) sediments differs from cohesive (mud) sediments. Tide-and wave-driven hydrodynamic disturbance causes spatiotemporal variations in oxygen levels, which select for microbial generalists and disrupt redox cascades. In this work, we profiled microbial communiti...

Permeable (sandy) sediments cover half of the continental margin and are major regulators of oceanic carbon cycling. The microbial communities within these highly dynamic sediments frequently shift between oxic and anoxic states, and hence are less stratified than those in cohesive (muddy) sediments. A major question is, therefore, how these commun...