Paper published: turnover of leaf lipids in soil

Hot off the press in Plant and Soil, our paper investigates the turnover of leaf lipids in soil. We developed a workflow involving extraction of U-13C lipids from wheat grown with 13CO2, and their subsequent minimally invasive and rapid addition to soil as a suspension in water. Loss of intact lipid was determined from LC-MS, …

Paper published: N dynamics in alpine soils

Paper led by Samantha Grover published in Soil Research explores N dynamics in four mountain soils from south-eastern Australia. Moderate turnover times and high stabilization of organic matter support Costin’s theory that these mountain soils formed in place as a result of biological activity, rather than reflecting their geological substrata. The pools of organic N …

Paper on D2O-lipid-SIP published

Paper published today in Soil Biology & Biochemistry describing a new way to estimate growth of soil microbes. We developed an analytical pipeline centred around D2O as a universal label coupled with LC-MS quantification of intact polar lipids. Quantification of 2H enrichment of a broad spectrum of lipids was possible in soils incubated with 50 …

3-year postdoc position available

A 3 year postdoc position is available in the plant-soil interactions lab. Use imaging, metabolomics, isotope labeling, metagenomics to uncover how plants alter the biophysical processes in the rhizosphere.  For details and to apply

awarded ARC Discovery Grant to work on rhizosphere process

We are delighted to share our proposal entitled “The critical role of rhizosheath biophysics in plant water availability” has been funded by the Australian Research Council.  Chief Investigators are Charles Warren,  Iain Young, Richard Trethowan and Sheikh Rabbi (all from University of Sydney) Project summary This project aims to determine how plants can increase their …