Boiteau Lab
Research
Projects
Metals play a critical role in environmental and biological processes as essential micronutrients, harmful toxins/contaminants, and as useful tracers of physical and chemical processes. Organic molecules often control the fate of metals in the environment by affecting their solubility, reactivity, and bioavailability. While these organic ligands are fundamental to our understanding of global metal cycling and biological productivity, their chemical composition has largely remained a mystery. One of our main goals is to develop and employ new analytical approaches for characterizing these molecules using chromatography and mass spectrometry, thereby shedding light on their microbial sources, reactivities, and bioavailabilities.
Improving the growth of biofuel algae and crops by understanding metabolic and nutrient exchange between phototrophic hosts and growth promoting bacteria.
Developing high resolution liquid chromatography mass spectrometry methods to quantitatively determine metal cycling rates in the environment.