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Contact
PD Dr. Gesche Braker
MPI für terrestrische Mikrobiologie
Karl-von-Frisch-Straße
D-35043 Marburg / Germany
Phone: +49 6421 178733
Fax: +49 6421 178999
Email: braker@mpi-marburg.mpg.de

Research group members
Group Leader: Dr. Gesche Braker
PhD student: Kristof Brenzinger
BSc student: Patricia Hildebrandt

PD Dr. Gesche Braker

Curriculum Vitae

Gesche Braker (born 1966)
Diploma (Biology), Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, 1995
Dr. rer. nat. (Microbiology), Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, 1999
Research Associate, Center for Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University, USA, 2000 - 2001
Senior Research Associate, MPI Marburg, 2001 - 2004
Group leader at the Department of Biogeochemistry, since 2005
Appointment as Research Group leader, 11/2011
Habilitation (Microbiology), Philipps-Universität Marburg 11/2011
Privatdozentin, Philipps-Universität Marburg, 01/2012

Research Area: Ecology of denitrifying microorganisms - Communities and their functioning

Nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent greenhouse gas which causes well-known climatic effects is continuously emitted to the atmosphere by natural, mainly microbial processes on Earth. Among all sources of atmospheric N2O soils contribute up to 70% of the total annual global emission. Denitrifiers reducing oxidized nitrogen compounds to gaseous products (NO, N2O, N2), mediate a large part of these emissions and also responsible for nitrogen losses from managed soils thereby limiting the availability of nitrogen for plants. Our research focuses on the ecology of denitrifying microbial communities in world soils, e.g. managed soils, but also pristine soils from dry areas (Namibia, Chile) and Amazonian Dark Earth (Terra preta de Indio, Brasil). Our central research topics are:

  • phylogenetic identity and functional diversity of soil denitrifiers
  • impact of environmental factors on soil denitrifier communities
  • structure-function interrelationships of soil denitrifier communities
More about "Ecology of denitrifying microorganisms - Communities and their functioning"

Recent publications

Orlando, J., Braker, G., Pommerenke, B. and Carú, M. (2012) Diversity and activity of denitrifiers in arid soil ecosystems of Central Chile. Frontiers in Terrestrial Microbiology, in press.
Braker, G., Dörsch, P. and Bakken, L.R. (2012) Genetic characterization of denitrifier communities with contrasting intrinsic functional traits. FEMS Microbiol. Ecol., 79, 542-554.
Dörsch, P., Braker, G. and Bakken, L.R. (2012) Community specific pH response of denitrification: experiments with cells extracted from organic soils. FEMS Microbiol. Ecol., 79, 530-541.

Publications since 1998

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TRF-CUT - An ARB software-integrated tool for in silico terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis (Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2005;71(3):1671-3).
TRF-CUT allows to predict in silico the terminal restriction fragments (T-RFs) of aligned small-subunit rRNA gene or functional gene sequences using any restriction endonuclease with an unambiguous restriction site. TRF-CUT is suitable to select enzymes with high phylogenetic resolution and assigning T-RFs from experimental T-RFLP data to potentially corresponding sequences in the database. The ARB upgrade with TRF-CUT is simple and does not alter the ARB source code.
Download the TRF-CUT software including a manual