Mark Alexander Lever is a microbial ecologist and biogeochemist who studies the role of microorganisms in the global carbon cycle. He is a professor of biogeochemistry and geobiology at the Marine Science Institute of the University of Texas at Austin.

Mark A. Lever (2014)

Biography

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Mark A. Lever earned his MA in Marine Biology at the Boston University Marine Program at Woods Hole in 2002 and his PhD in Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2008. He worked as a postdoctoral scientist at Aarhus University from 2009 to 2014, and was a faculty member at ETH Zurich from 2014 to 2022, before joining the University of Texas at Austin. Lever was a member of the Deep Life Scientific Steering Committee and Synthesis Group 2019 for the Deep Carbon Observatory,[1] and vice-chair of the European Cooperation of Science and Technology network "COST", and is an associate editor for Frontiers in Microbiology.[2]

In his research, Mark A. Lever investigates the factors that determine the production, fate, and storage of organic carbon in aquatic sediments and in the Earth's crust.[3] [4] [5] In 2013 he discovered that microbes survive deep in the oceanic crust by living off of chemical energy released by water-rock reactions.[6] In addition, his research group is investigating the impact of macrofaunal bioturbation on microbial community structure and the sedimentary carbon cycle,[7] the ecological and physiological strategies of microbial life inhabiting long-term energy-limited environments,[8][9] and the potential for sediments to serve as genetic archives of past environmental change.[10]

References

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  1. ^ "DCO Scientific Steering Committees | Deep Carbon Observatory Portal". deepcarbon.net. Archived from the original on 2017-08-02. Retrieved 2017-08-02.
  2. ^ "Mark Lever - Loop Profile".
  3. ^ Lever, Mark A.; Teske, Andreas (2015). "Diversity of methane-cycling archaea in hydrothermal sediment investigated by general and group-specific PCR primers". Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 81 (4): 1426–1441. Bibcode:2015ApEnM..81.1426L. doi:10.1128/AEM.03588-14. PMC 4309701. PMID 25527539.
  4. ^ Møller, Mikkel; Glombitza, Clemens; Lever, Mark A.; Deng, Longhui; Morono, Yuki; Inagaki, Fumio; Doll, Mechthild; Su, Chih-Chieh; Lomstein, Bente (2018). "D:L-Amino Acid Modeling Reveals Fast Microbial Turnover of Days to Months in the Subsurface Hydrothermal Sediment of Guaymas Basin". Front. Microbiol. 9: 967. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2018.00967. PMC 5963217. PMID 29867871.
  5. ^ Eickenbusch, Philip; Takai, Ken; Sissmann, Olivier; Suzuki, Shino; Menzies, Catriona; Sakai, Sanae; Sansjofre, Pierre; Tasumi, Eiji; Bernasconi, Stefano; Glombitza, Clemens; Jørgensen, Bo Barker; Lever, Mark A. (2019). "Origin of Short-Chain Organic Acids in Serpentinite Mud Volcanoes of the Mariana Convergent Margin". Frontiers in Microbiology. 10: 1729. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2019.01729. PMC 6677109. PMID 31404165.
  6. ^ Lever, Mark A.; Rouxel, Olivier; Alt, Jeffrey; Shimizu, Nobumichi; Ono, Shuhei.; Coggon, Rosalind M.; Shanks III, Wayne C.; Lapham, laura; Elvert, Marcus; Prieto-Mollar, Xavier; Hinrichs, Kai-Uwe; Teske, Andreas (2013). "Evidence for Microbial Carbon and Sulfur Cycling in Deeply Buried Ridge Flank Basalt". Science. 339 (6125): 1305–1308. Bibcode:2013Sci...339.1305L. doi:10.1126/science.1229240. PMID 23493710. S2CID 10728606.
  7. ^ Chen, Xihan; Andersen, Thorbjørn Joest; Morono, Yuki; Inagaki, Fumio; Jørgensen, Bo Barker; Lever, Mark Alexander (2017-05-25). "Bioturbation as a key driver behind the dominance of Bacteria over Archaea in near-surface sediment". Scientific Reports. 7 (1): 2400. Bibcode:2017NatSR...7.2400C. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-02295-x. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 5445093. PMID 28546547.
  8. ^ Lever, Mark A. (2012). "Acetogenesis in the energy-starved deep biosphere – a paradox?". Front. Microbiol. 2: 284. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2011.00284. PMC 3276360. PMID 22347874.
  9. ^ Lever, Mark A.; Rogers, Karyn; Lloyd, Karen G.; Overmann, Jörg O.; Schink, Bernhard; Thauer, Rudolf; Hoehler, Tori M.; Jørgensen, Bo Barker (2015). "Microbial life under extreme energy limitation: a synthesis of laboratory- and field-based investigations". FEMS Microbiology Reviews. 39 (5): 688–728. doi:10.1093/femsre/fuv020. PMID 25994609.
  10. ^ Torti, Andrea; Jørgensen, Bo Barker; Lever, Mark A. (2018). "Preservation of microbial DNA in marine sediments: insights from extracellular DNA pools". Environ. Microbiol. 20 (12): 4526–4542. Bibcode:2018EnvMi..20.4526T. doi:10.1111/1462-2920.14401. PMID 30198168. S2CID 52178788.

Further reading

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Universe Today