Dr. Mark Brown
- Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
- Room: 357A, Biological Sciences
- Phone: (+61 2) 9385 3382
- Fax: (+61 2) 9385 1483
- email: markbrown@unsw.edu.au
ARC QEII Fellow 2009 - 2013
Research Interests
My research focuses on microbes (Bacteria, Archaea and microbial Eukaryotes), primarily from marine environments, and how they interact with each other and their environment
to form communities that sustain critical ecosystem processes.
Marine microbes are intricately linked to global ecosystems. They perform ~50% of global primary production and mediate processes that drive coastal and open-ocean biogeochemical cycles, including the flux of particulate carbon to the deep ocean. These organisms thus control the fundamental energy base upon which all higher trophic levels depend and modulate the biological ocean carbon pump that helps regulate Earth’s climate.
Projects
Towards a predictive model for coastal marine microbial assemblages
Funding: ARC Discovery Grant DP0988002 $725,850
Associates:
Jed Fuhrman <http://fuhrmanlab.usc.edu/>
USC Microbial Observatory <http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/biosci/Caron_lab/MO/>
Evolution and adaptation of gut microbiota in marine mammals
Funding: Evolution and Ecology Research Centre $13,000
Associates:
Tiffanie Nelson <http://www.bees.unsw.edu.au/school/researchstudents/nelsontiffanie.html>
Tracey Rogers <http://www.bees.unsw.edu.au/school/staff/rogers/rogerstracey.html>
Professional Experience
2002-2004 Wrigley Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
2004-2007 Research Fellow, NASA Astrobiology Institute, University of Hawaii, Honolulu
2007-2008 Research Fellow, Environmental Microbiology Initiative, UNSW
Active Research Projects
Publications
- Lauro, F.M., McDougald, D., Thomas, T., Williams, T.J., Egan, S., Rice, S., DeMaere, M.Z., Ting, L., Ertan, H., Johnson, J., Ferriera, S., Lapidus, A., Anderson, I., Kyrpides, N., Munk, A.C., Detter, C., Brown, M.V., Robb, F.T., Kjelleberg, S. and Cavicchioli, R. (2009)
- The genomic basis of trophic strategy in marine bacteria.
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106: 15527–15533. (Cover story and Commentary: Church, M.J. The trophic tapestry of the sea. 15519-15520.)
- Brown, M.V., Philip, G.K., Bunge, J., Smith, M.C., Bissett, A., Lauro, F., Fuhrman, J.A., and Donachie, S.P. (2009)
- Microbial community structure in the North Pacific Ocean.
- ISMEJ (doi:10.1038/ismej.2009.86)
- Mahdi, L.E., Statzell-Tallman, A., Fell, J.W., Brown, M.V. and Donachie, S.P. (2008)
- Sympodiomycopsis lanaii sp. nov., a basidiomycetous yeast from Hawaii
- FEMS Yeast Research
- Fuhrman, J.A., Steele, J.A, Hewson, I., Schwalbach, M.S., Brown, M.V., Green, J.L. and Brown J. (2008)
- Latitude diversity gradient for marine bacterioplankton.
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA. 105: 7774-7778
- Donachie, S.P., Foster, J.S. and Brown, M.V. (2007)
- Culture clash: the dogma of microbial diversity.
- ISME J. 1:97-99
- Brown, M.V. and Donachie, S.P. (2007)
- Evidence for tropical endemicity in the marine delta-Proetobacterial Marine Group B/SAR324 bacterioplankton clade.
- Aquatic Microbial Ecology. 46:107-115
- Fuhrman, J.A., Hewson, I., Schwalbach, M.S., Steel, J., Brown, M.V. and Naeem, S. (2006)
- Annually reoccurring bacterioplankton communities are predictable from ocean conditions.
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA. 103:13104-13109
- Brown, M.V. and Fuhrman, J.A. (2005)
- Marine bacterial microdiversity as revealed by internal transcribed spacer analysis.
- Aquatic Microbial Ecology 41:15-23
- Brown, M.V., Schwalbach, M.S., Hewson, I. and Fuhrman, J.A. (2005)
- Coupling 16S-ITS clone libraries and automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis to show marine microbial diversity: development and application to a time series.
- Environmental Microbiology. 7:1466-1479
- Schwalbach, M.S., Brown, M.V. and Fuhrman, J.A. (2005)
- Impact of light on marine bacterioplankton community structure
- Aquatic Microbial Ecology. 39:235-245
- Caron, D.A., Countway, P.D. and Brown, M.V. (2004)
- The Growing Contributions of Molecular Biology and Immunology to Protistan Ecology: Molecular Signatures as Ecological Tools
- The Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology. 51:38-48