Soil biology

Paul Carini

Associate Professor, Soil / Subsurface Microbial Ecology
Associate Professor, School of Plant Sciences
Associate Professor, Genetics - GIDP
Associate Professor, BIO5 Institute
Member of the General Faculty
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 621-1646

Work Summary

We investigate the myriad of ways microbes living in the wild (soil, water and air) affect Earth processes and our health.

Research Interest

The Carini lab is focused on understanding how microbes help make Earth habitable for humans. This view leads us to diverse questions in both terrestrial and aquatic environments with the goal of understanding how microbial communities transform important nutrients, remove pollutants, affect soil fertility and influence aquatic productivity. By studying the growth of microbial cultures, their genome sequences and their environmental distributions, we design experiments that help uncover new and unusual biogeochemical cycles and provide hypothesis-based explanations for long standing geochemical observations. Keywords: Microbial ecology, environmental microbiology, microbiome, soil microbiology, microbial oceanography