Dr Paul Evans

Primary Research Interest

Metabolism and Genomics of Methanogenic Microorganisms

About Me

Paul is an ARC Future Fellow at the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics (ACE) within the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biology. At ACE he uses molecular, metagenomic and cultivation techniques to study methane metabolising microorganisms from natural and engineered anaerobic environments.

Anaerobic microbiology studies are often limited by the slow growth and fastidious nature of the microbial cohort. This is especially true for methane-metabolising microorganisms from the domain Archaea, called methanogens. These microbes play an important role in the cycling of this globally important compound, but are poorly characterised. Study of these microorganisms has recently been revolutionised by the advent of high-throughput DNA sequencing techniques. From the resulting DNA sequence data it is now possible to assemble genomes from these poorly described microorganisms and infer their metabolic capabilities. Recent papers led by Paul have used these high-throughput metagenomic techniques to describe methanogens with unusual metabolic capabilities.

Future challenges in the study of these key methane-cycling microorganisms involves the use of genomic information to guide cultivation studies and put the metabolic capabilities of these recalcitrant Archaea in context of carbon cycling within anaerobic environments.

Teaching Interests

Funded Projects