Annie Bourbonnais, PhD Candidate

Hydrothermal vents, which have been proposed as an analog to habitats where life originated, are fissures at the earth’s surface where geothermally heated fluids are released and re-mixed with sea water. The nitrogen cycle is mostly dependent on bacterial reactions and is not well known in these environments. Particularly, the reactions involving bioavailable (fixed) nitrogen are poorly documented despite the fact that nitrogen is a macronutrient essential to living organisms. During my Ph.D. I will study the nitrogen cycle and the related microbial community in hydrothermal vents using a combination of isotopic and molecular biology methods.

Contact me at annieb@uvic.ca

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