Microbial ecology & evolution
Microbes are Earth’s biogeochemical engineers. We explore the hidden microbial diversity shaping life, climate, and chemistry.
Research focus
connecting ecology, evolution, genomics, chemistry, and environmental science to understand how microbiomes are structured and why they matter
How do microbes diversify, adapt, and assemble across changing environments? We link genetic variation to the traits that shape microbial communities.
Explore theme →Microbial life is written in chemistry. We study the metabolites and biosynthetic genes that shape how microbes compete, cooperate, and build communities.
Explore theme →Microbial communities drive Earth’s elemental cycles. We study how they shape carbon cycling, methane oxidation, and ecosystem responses to environmental change.
Explore theme →
Assistant Professor
Roy M. Huffington Dept. of Earth Sciences
Southern Methodist University (SMU)
Dallas, Texas, USA
Recent lab news
publications, fieldwork, student milestones, and other recent lab activity
Junior Kyra Waterman was selected to the Hamilton Undergraduate Research Scholars Program to continue her work on metabolomic differentiation of Bifidobacterium. Senior James Moore received an Undergraduate Research Assistantship to develop functional primers for methane oxidation detection.
Alex presented new work at ISME20 on how environmental context and biological resolution shape evolutionary processes. The talk brought together our experimental evolution and genome-resolved metagenomics research in Curtobacterium to ask how well laboratory experiments and reconstructed genomes capture evolution in complex natural communities.
Our newest paper explores how methane leaking from natural gas infrastructure impacts soil microbiomes. This first new research direction from the Chase Lab at SMU grew into a highly interdisciplinary collaboration from a very simple question: what about the microbes?
Motahare went to NYC to receive her award for her graduate fellowship from the IOA. Then she traveled to DC to give a talk and poster presentation at ASM Microbe about our recent work in methane attenuation in natural gas pipeline leaks.
Join the lab
We welcome students excited to combine fieldwork, omics, computation, chemistry, and ecological theory to understand how microbes shape ecosystems.
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