News

May 2026 - Matti spent 5 weeks at KITP to take part in the program Coarse-graining Microbial Ecology: from Genes to Physiological Strategies to Communities across Environments. Fantastic time catching up with old friends and make new ones!

November 2025 - Our former MSc student John Collins (Master Bioinformatics and Systems Biology) has won the first prize of the KHMW Jong Talent Afstudeerprijzen voor Life Sciences 2025 for his thesis on "The Microbial Ecology of Biodegradable Plastics in the Wadden Sea: Implications for Life in the Ocean and in Space."

This project was done in collaboration with Prof Amaral-Zettler and her team at NIOZ. In this work, John studied the impact of environmental and biotic factors on microbes living on plastic surfaces in the ocean. He also spent some of his internship at the European Space Agency, where he worked on designing and applying microbial consortia to circularize plastic usage in biological life support systems. He has since moved to a PhD position in Vancouver, Canada. 

Well done and good luck, John!

October 2025 - The first preprint of the lab is online. In it, we analyzed the fraction of bacteria that can grow on different amino acids as a carbon sources and explain the resulting statistical patterns using biochemical constraints. Click here to read more! 

August 2025 - Charlie has joined the lab for his MSc internship where he will develop models for phage-host dynamics in complex communities. Welcome, Charlie!

July 2025 - Matti presented at the GRC Microbial Population Dynamics. An exciting opportunity to share our work with so many like-minded scientists.

August 2024 - John has joined the lab to work on microbial communities on plastics in the ocean in a collaboration with Linda Amaral-Zettler. Welcome, John!

July 2024 - Matti presented at the GRC Marine Microbes in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. A fantastic and inspiring conference, can't wait for the 2026 edition!

June 2024 - Sarah has joined the lab as our first PhD student. She will work on marine bacteria and their phages, in collaboration with the Mulla group at the VU. Welcome, Sarah!

September 2023 - Our paper "Genome content predicts the carbon catabolic preferences of heterotrophic bacteria" is now finally published in Nature Microbiology.

September 2022 - The lab opens - exciting times!