GREENING LAB | NEWS
June 30, 2019: Prestigious award
Chris has been awarded the Australian Society for Microbiology’s Jim Pittard Award for Early Career Researcher. He will present his award lecture, focusing on bacteria that live on air, at the ASM’s annual conference in Adelaide in July.
Apr 25, 2019: New PhD students
The Greening lab has considerably expanded over the last six months. We’re delighted to welcome Bob Leung, Katie Bayly, and David Gillett (pictured below) as PhD students, as well as Caitlin Welsh as an Honours student. Details of their backgrounds and projects can be found here.
Apr 08, 2019: Welcome Rachael
Dr Rachael Lappan has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Coming from a clinical background in Perth, she will be primarily working on the microbiological aspects of RISE, a major intervention trial focused on improving environmental and human health in Fiji and Indonesia. Learn about her here.
Jan 20, 2019: Staff Farewells
Several staff members have recently left the group to take great new positions, namely Dr Tom Lines (now University of Adelaide), Dr Maria Chuvochina (now University of Queensland), and Dr Karen Jordaan (now University of Pretoria). We wish them all the best. Are there greener pastures than Team Greening?!
Jan 1, 2019: Associate Professorship
In Monash University’s latest promotions round, Chris has been promoted from Lecturer to Associate Professor. This reflects his leadership in research, supervision, service, and teaching with the School of Biological Sciences.
Nov 10, 2019: Congrats Katie and Guy
Congratulations to Katie Bayly and Guy Shelley for being awarded first-class Honours. Both did excellent projects in the area of trace gas metabolism. Both will be returning to the lab: Katie for PhD and Guy as a research assistant.
Dec 31, 2017: Faculty Awards
Rounding off an excellent year, Chris received the Faculty of Science Exceptional Achievement Award and the School of Biological Sciences Teaching Excellence Award. The second award recognises his leadership in refreshing the unit BIO3082: Global Change Biology.
Dec 12, 2017: Medical funding success
In a major boost for our medical research program, we were awarded two major grants by the NHMRC to tackle tuberculosis infection: a New Investigator grant focused on validating new drug targets and a collaborative grant with ANU to alleviate nitroimidazole drug resistance.
Nov 10, 2017: Grant success
We have been awarded an ARC Discovery Grant with A/Prof Perran Cook to expand our research into the microbial ecology and biogeochemistry of hydrogen cycling in permeable sediments. These findings build on our recent Nature Geoscience article and Ya-Jou Chen’s PhD project.
Jun 22, 2019: Ruminant article
Chris has published a first-author article in the ISME Journal together with collaborators in Otago, Illinois, and AgResearch. The article, which focuses on hydrogen transactions in the ruminant, will help efforts to mitigate methane emissions in agriculture.
Apr 05 2019: Nature Communications articles
We have published two papers in Nature Communications. The first, featuring major contributions from Chris and Blair, provides a revised biosynthesis pathway for F420 in mycobacteria. The second, led by Xiyang Dong and Casey Hubert, identifies new pathways for anaerobic hydrocarbon degradation.
Mar 11 2019: Nature Microbiology articles
Congratulations to Helena for her first-author paper in Nature Microbiology. This article, co-led with Perran Cook, reveals how microbial communities mediate biogeochemical cycling in coastal sediments. We also contributed to an article on eukaryogenesis led by Anja Spang and Thijs Ettema.
Feb 10 2019: ISME article
As shown in the publications page, we have several articles coming out in the next few months in top journals ISME Journal, Nature Communications, and Nature Microbiology. These include Zahra’s first-author paper on Chloroflexi persistence than has been published in ISME.
Dec 17 2018: JBC article
We have published a co-corresponding author with Prof Greg Cook and Prof Colin Jackson in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. This extensive article reveals the structure and function of a flavin-binding protein involved in adaptation of mycobacteria to hypoxia.
Oct 1 2018: Bergey’s chapter
We have published a book chapter with Dr Matthew Stott in the definitive resource Bergey’s Manual of Systematics of Bacteria and Archaea. Its details characterisation of the volcanic acidobacterial isolate Pyrinomonas, building on our work published in PNAS.
Jul 10 2018: Flying high
Over the last six months, we have published three new papers with Prof Paul Sunnucks and Dr Sasha Pavlova on selection for mitochondrial function in climate adaptation of songbirds. These papers were published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Molecular Ecology, and Heredity.
Apr 1 2018: New ISME & ES&T papers
We’ve published a new paper in the ISME Journal, presenting a deadly twist on the ecological phenomenon of interspecies hydrogen transfer, looking at hydrocarbon-contaminated sediments. We’ve also published a paper on organohalide-contaminated ecosystems in Environmental Science & Technology.
Dec 7 2017: Co-first Nature paper
Chris is co-first author on a new paper in Nature funded by his ARC DECRA Fellowship. We helped resolve the conundrum of why the extremely nutrient-starved soils of Antarctica hosts rich microbial diversity — they can live on thin air by using atmospheric trace gases as energy and carbon sources.
News Archive
For older news from the lab, please check out the news archive.