Lea Blum
MPI for Marine Microbiology
Celsiusstr. 1
D-28359 Bremen
Germany
About Me
I completed my Bachelor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel. Here, I could gain my first field trip experiences working as a student assistant in the Biogeochemistry department of the Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research. I further wrote my Bachelor thesis at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute on Helgoland analysing the Vibrio community response to a heatwave scenario in a marine mesocosm experiment.
To follow my interest in Marine Microbiology, I continued to study the MarMic Master program at the MPI and joined the Flow Cytometry Group for my Master thesis. Here, I studied virus-host interactions of SAR11 and phage throughout a year-long time-series in the German Bight. And this topic also led me to my PhD.
I got extremely fascinated by viruses and their role in the ocean. They are not only the most abundant entities in our oceans, they also shape the evolution of their host cells, control bacterial populations, and therefore influence biogeochemical cycles. During my PhD I want to study virus host interactions and quantify infection dynamics, as well as virus production rates.
Field trip experience:
- FS Meteor M176/2 – GEOTRACES / Rainbow plume (2019)
- FS Sonne SO289 – GEOTRACES (2022)
- FS Meteor M184 – Climate fluctuation (2022)
- FS Sonne SO298 – GEOTRACES (2022)
- COS:MOS'26 sampling campaign on Svalbard (2026)
Methods I will use during my PhD:
- Fluorescence in situ Hybridization (FISH) techniques
- Advanced Microscopy techniques
- Flow Cytometry and Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS)
- Bioorthogonal Non-Canonical Amino Acid Tagging (BONCAT)
- Virome sampling