PhD Studentship: Resolving carbon pathways to microbiomes in extreme geothermal environments

Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences
Title: Resolving carbon pathways to microbiomes in extreme geothermal environments
Application deadline: All year round
How to apply: Click the 'Apply' button above.

Home and overseas

This 3.5-year PhD studentship is open to Home (UK) and overseas students. The successful candidate will receive an annual tax-free stipend set at the UKRI rate (£20,780 for 2025/26; subject to annual uplift), and tuition fees will be paid. We expect the stipend to increase each year. The start date is October 2026.

We recommend that you apply early as the advert may be removed before the deadline.

Microbial communities found in geothermal springs are characterised by relatively low phylogenetic diversity and a lack of organic carbon inputs, making them reservoirs of organisms capable of efficient CO2-driven carbon cycling. Importantly, these can be harnessed for new CO2 capture and bioconversion processes that promise to outcompete current technologies, and are ideal model systems to explore experimentally pathways of carbon flow from gaseous sources into microbiomes. This project will use state-of-the-art stable isotope tracer experiments (13C) to track the utilization of CO2 by different microbial taxa. Our hypothesis is that CO2-driven carbon cycling is conducted via a metabolic division of labour between multiple community members that can be traced through stable isotope probing linked to multi-omics analyses. These system-level measurements will be integrated with analysis of the metabolic potential of our experimental communities using strain-resolved metagenomics, undertaken by other members of the team. The isotope tracer experiments will be undertaken in situ in geothermal springs in Iceland, and in controlled conditions in the laboratory in Manchester. This PhD is part of a multi-disciplinary team supported by a £5.4 M BBSRC sLoLa and offers numerous opportunities for training and collaboration, as well as direct training in isotopic, -omics and microbial ecology approaches.

Supervisory team:

Sophie Nixon and Andrew Pitt, The University of Manchester
David Johnson, Lancaster University

Applicants should have, or expect to achieve, at least a 2.1 honours degree or a master’s (or international equivalent) in a relevant science or engineering related discipline.

To apply please contact the main supervisor, Dr Sophie Nixon - sophie.nixon@manchester.ac.uk. Please include details of your current level of study, academic background and any relevant experience and include a paragraph about your motivation to study this PhD project.

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