People
Professor Thomas Mock FRSB FHEA
Chair in Marine Microbiology
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Phycology
Guest Professor (Honorary Chair) of Ocean University of China, Qingdao
Email: T.Mock@uea.ac.uk
Biography
I obtained my MSc (1998) in Biology with emphasis on Biological Oceanography at the Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel (GEOMAR) and the PhD (2003) at Bremen University (AWI), Germany. Before joining the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 2007, most of my PostDoc research was conducted with a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in the School of Oceanography, University of Washington (E.V. Armbrust lab) in joint cooperation with the Biotechnology Center, University of Wisconsin (M.R. Sussman lab), USA. Before I was promoted to Professor (Personal Chair) in 2014, I was Reader (2012-2014) and had a Research Councils UK (RCUK) Academic Fellowship (2007-2012).
Research Interests
Environmental and functional genomics of marine microbial organisms; metagenomics of the upper ocean; physiological adaptation; diatom evolution and biology; photosynthesis; polar biology; biochemistry; biological oceanography.
Publications
For publications, please see the publications page.
Dr Nigel Belshaw
Laboratory Technician
Email: N.Belshaw@uea.ac.uk
Biography
After obtaining a degree in Biochemistry from the University of East Anglia (UEA) I studied for a PhD on the regulation of gene expression in filamentous fungi at the Institute of Food Research (IFR) in the Norwich Research Park. This project and my subsequent research were focussed on the role of chromatin structure and epigenetic modifications as regulators of gene expression. Until recently I led a team at IFR investigating the role of epigenetics in gut disease and the influence of lifestyle factors. In my current role I will be developing and utilising the CRISPR/Cas genome editing tool to understand gene function in the polar diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus.
Thomas Birley
PhD Student (NRPDTP)
Email: t.birley@uea.ac.uk
Primary supervisor: Professor Cock van Oosterhout
Secondary supervisor: Professor Thomas Mock
Biography
I obtained an MSci from University College London in Genetics, Evolution and Environment, undertaking a research project on the evolution of Apicomplexa. I am currently employed at the Mock Lab researching a method of obtaining cell free DNA from aquatic environment using CRISPR-Cas9. In October 2019 I am due to start a PhD in phytoplankton genetics. The polar phytoplankton Fragilariopsis cylindrus has been shown to an unusual biallelic expression in response to the seasonal variation in environmental conditions. I will be researching the molecular mechanisms that that cause this, whether this is unique in F. cylindrus, and what is the significance for this on its evolution.
Longji Deng
PhD Student
Email: longji.deng@uea.ac.uk
Primary supervisor: Professor Thomas Mock
Secondary supervisor: Professor Cock van Oosterhout
Biography
I have completed my BSc and MSci degrees in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. In my Master’s project, I explored the impact of ocean acidification and iron limitation in the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana. In my Ph.D. project at UEA, I will apply a combination of reverse genetics, transcriptomics and metatranscriptomics to explore the biochemical function of proton-pumping Rhodopsin proteins in diatoms.
Simin Gao
Ph.D. student
Email: simin.gao@uea.ac.uk
Primary supervisor: Dr. Nikolai Pedentchouk
Secondary supervisor: Prof. Thomas Mock
Supervisor at SUSTech (China): Dr. Xinxin Li
Biography
I have received my MSc in Marine Biology at the Tongji University (China), where I studied membrane lipids of deep sea Archaea (glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether). In my masters project, I was applying organic geochemistry methods to identify the differential archaeal carbon molecules. In my Ph.D. project at UEA and SUSTech, I will study is sea-ice dynamics in the Holocene using algal biomarkers. This is a splite-site Ph.D. programme between University of East Anglia (UEA) and Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). I am going to culture sea-ice algae under different conditions in the laboratory, extract specific organic molecules and determine their stable isotope characteristics of both natural and cultured sea-ice algal biomarkers.
Reuben Gilbertson
Ph.D. Student (The Leverhulme Trust)
Email: r.gilbertson@uea.ac.uk
Primary Supervisor: Professor Thomas Mock
Secondary Supervisor: Professor Cock van Oosterhout
Team member: Dr. Amanda Hopes
Biography
I graduated from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), in July 2017 with a degree in Marine Biology. During my undergraduate studies at UNCW, I served as a research intern at the Sea Turtle Protection Program, Bald Head Island, North Carolina, where I studied epibiotic communities on the carapaces of nesting sea turtles. As an undergraduate, I became increasingly fascinated in marine phytoplankton, specifically diatoms, and their ability to adapt to different environmental conditions. Following graduation I returned home to the UK, working first as Research Assistant within a team at the University of Cambridge studying gene expression and methylation patterns in neonatal and adult stem cells. I then moved to begin my graduate studies at UEA where I am currently in the first year studying for my PhD with Professor Mock. The focus of my research is the use of reverse gene editing methods to further understand the adaptive evolution of the model polar diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus.
Research Interests
Diatoms, genome editing, polar science, adaptive evolution, genomics, molecular biology
Dr. Amanda Hopes
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Email: a.hopes@uea.ac.uk
Biography
I finished my PhD in Thomas Mock’s group in 2017, working on developing new molecular tools for diatoms and investigating the function of a gene potentially involved in regulating silica metabolism in the polar diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus. During this time, I developed a transformation system for F. cylindrus, CRISPR-Cas using a Golden-Gate approach for gene-editing in the model diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana and started development of an Inverse yeast 1-hybrid system for F. cylindrus.
Prior to my PhD I worked for a biotechnology company for four and half years as a researcher, developing molecular clinical diagnostic tools.
Following my PhD I started a short- term NRP Post-Doc investing protein regulation in T. pseudonana through ribosome profiling and adapting codon usage using CRISPR-driven homologous recombination developed in the Mock lab.
I have just started my second Post-Doc with Thomas researching the molecular underpinnings of adaptive evolution in polar diatoms.
Research Interests
Functional genomics; molecular biology; diatoms/algae; silica metabolism; gene and protein regulation, evolution, polar biology.
Publications
Hopes, A., Nekrasov, V., Belshaw, N., Grouneva, I., Kamoun, S., Mock, T. 2017. Genome Editing in Diatoms Using CRISPR-Cas to Induce Precise Bi- allelic Deletions. Bio-protocol, 7(23).
Hopes, A., Thomas, D.N. and Mock, T., 2017. Polar Microalgae: Functional Genomics, Physiology, and the Environment. In Psychrophiles: From Biodiversity to Biotechnology (pp. 305-344). Springer International Publishing.
Hopes, A., Nekrasov, V., Kamoun, S. and Mock, T., 2016. Editing of the urease gene by CRISPR-Cas in the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana. Plant methods, 12(1), p.49.
Hopes A., Mock, T. 2015. Evolution of Microalgae and Their Adaptations in Different Marine Ecosystems. eLS (DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0023744).
Hopes A. & Mock T. (2014) Diatoms: Glass-dwelling dynamos. Microbiology Today :41(1), 20-23.
Dr. Maria Luisa Sánchez Montes
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Email: M.Sanchez-Montes@uea.ac.uk
Biography
I am a climate and environmental scientist specialised in biogeochemical and geochemical analyses. In Prof. Thomas Mock’s lab I will be conducing modern sea-ice culturing experiments to understanding their chemical fingerprints (highly branched isoprenoids (HBIs) and HBI-specific stable isotopes) and use them for novel past sea-ice dynamic assessment. This project is done in collaboration with the University of Plymouth and funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
Before joining Thomas’ lab, I was a Researcher at Durham University reconstructing past climates and environments at different locations around the globe. In 2018 I was awarded a PhD in ice sheet-ocean-climate interactions from Durham University, UK. My PhD focussed on lipid biomarker and stable isotope analyses of marine sediments from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 341 to the Gulf of Alaska to understand the onset and evolution of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet and associated mechanisms of glaciation.
Publications
Sánchez-Montes, M. L., McClymont, E. L., Lloyd, J. M., Müller, J., Cowan, E. A., and Zorzi, C.: Late Pliocene Cordilleran Ice Sheet development with warm Northeast Pacific sea surface temperatures, Climate Past Discussions, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2019-29
Monica Pichler
Ph.D. Student (NRPDTP)
Email: M.Pichler@uea.ac.uk
Primary Supervisor: Professor Thomas Mock
Secondary Supervisor: Dr Nicola Patron (Earlham Institute)
Team members: Dr. Amanda Hopes
Biography
I have completed my Master in Geobiology and Paleobiology, with an emphasis on Geomicrobiology, at the University of Munich. Through my research projects I have gained experience in high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics for bacterial and eukaryotic diversity studies. For my PhD project at UEA, I apply ribosome profiling to reveal how temperature, which is one of the most important growth factors, affects translation in diatoms. Furthermore, I use CRISPR/Cas9 in combination with ribosome profiling to provide insights how codon usage, tRNA abundance and tRNA- derived small non-coding RNAs impact protein synthesis in the model diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana under changing environmental conditions.
Publications
Pichler M et al., 2018. A 16S rRNA gene sequencing and analysis protocol for the Illumina MiniSeq platform. Microbiology Open https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/mbo3.611
Johanna Winder
PhD Student (NRPDTP)
Email: J.Winder@uea.ac.uk
Primary Supervisor: Professor Thomas Mock
Secondary Supervisor: Professor Cock van Oosterhout
I obtained my BA (Hons) in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, graduating in 2020. During my undergraduate degree, I pursued a variety of interests, ranging from cell and developmental biology to ecology and evolution. This piqued my interest in environmental microbiology, and I furthered this by embarking on a research project in northwestern Canada, using shotgun metagenomics to explore how permafrost thaw affects microbes in thermokarst lake sediments. Following this, I became interested in applying microbiology to solve global challenges, and to this end undertook an MSc by research at the University of Exeter in the Exeter Microbial Biofuels Group. I then decided to turn to the intersection of biotechnology and microbial physiology, ecology and evolution, through a PhD at UEA supervised by Professor Mock. I began my studies in October 2021, and my research aims to understand at the function of ice-binding protein diversity in the polar diatom F. cylindrus.
Research Interests
Polar microbiology, biotechnology, diatom ecophysiology, extremophiles
Dr. Andrew Toseland
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Email: Andrew.Toseland@earlham.ac.uk
Biography
My degree in Software Engineering at UWE Bristol focused on Object Oriented design and programming in Java. My main interests lay in Computer Science topics, particularly machine learning, which was the focus of my final year project. My PhD is focused on a computational analysis of marine eukaryote metatranscriptome data using Perl and published bioinformatics tools to develop an analysis pipeline.
Eukaryotic marine metatranscriptomics; genome assembly; high-throughput sequencing.
Selected publications:
Toseland A., Daines S. J., Clark J. R., Kirkham A., Strauss J., Uhlig C., Lenton T. M., Valentin K., Pearson G. A., Moulton V., Mock T. (2013) The impact of temperature on marine phytoplankton resource allocation and metabolism. Nature Climate Change
(DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1989)
Toseland A., Moxon S., Mock T., Moulton V. (2014) Metatranscriptomes from diverse microbial communities: assessment of data reduction techniques for rigorous annotation. BMC Genomics (DOI: 10.1186/1471-2164-15-901)
William Boulton
PhD Student (ARIES)
Email: W.Boulton@uea.ac.uk
Primary Supervisor: Professor Vincent Moulton (School of Computing)
Secondary Supervisors: Professor Thomas Mock
Dr Richard Leggett (The Genome Analysis Centre)
Biography
I studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge and graduated in 2016 with an Math degree, before working in mathematical modelling and software engineering at a small engineering firm. I became interested in metagenomics during an internship at EMBL-EBI, where I worked on projects about SARS-CoV-2 evolution and variant tracking through wastewater metagenomes. This led to applying for a PhD place at the UEA, supervised by Vincent Moulton, Thomas Mock, and Richard Leggett, and funded by the ARIES DTP. I started my PhD in October 2021, and will be analysing the largest single collection of Arctic ocean metagenomes, collected by MOSAiC - which is the first survey of the Arctic ocean observing a full annual cycle, including the polar winter. My research aims to uncover the microbial diversity of a warming Arctic ocean, and understand the biotic and abiotic drivers of this diversity
Research interests: Bioinformatics, data science, metagenomics and metagenomic assembly, Arctic microbiology
Anthony Duncan
PhD Student (NERC)
Email: A.Duncan@uea.ac.uk
Primary Supervisor: Professor Vincent Moulton (School of Computing)
Secondary Supervisors: Professor Thomas Mock
Dr Richard Leggett (The Genome Analysis Centre)
Biography
I am PhD student in the School of Computing Science researching and applying computational techniques to help understand complex metagenomics data, with a particular interest in genome-resolved metagenomics and polar microbe communities. My undergraduate studies were in American and English literature also at UEA completed in 2009. I later returned to study after about a decade, completing an MSc in Computer Science where my dissertation project involving methods of phylogenetic tree construction kindled and interest in computational biology. To date my research has included generating some of the first eukaryotic metagenomic-assembled genomes for ocean microbes, and investigating the application of unsupervised machine learning techniques to functional profiles of ocean microbe communities.
Research interests: Bioinformatics, data science, metagenomics and metagenomic assembly (e.g. MAGs), marine microbiology
Publications
(2020) Metagenome-assembled genomes of phytoplankton communities across the Arctic Circle. bioRxiv
Emma Langan
PhD Student
Email: emma.langan@uea.ac.uk
Primary Supervisor: Professor Thomas Mock
Secondary Supervisors: Dr Richard Leggett (Earlham Institute)
Professor Vincent Moulton (School of Computing)
Dr Clara Manno (British Antarctic Survey)
Biography
I studied Infectious Diseases with a focus on microbiology at the University of Edinburgh and graduated in 2015. My honours project was genetic identification of zoonotic trypanosomiasis strains in cattle, which sparked my interest in genomics and bioinformatics. I completed an MSc in Bioinformatics, also at the University of Edinburgh, in 2017. My MSc research project mainly involved genome assembly and analysis, I also created a genomic database and browser and performed DNA sequencing using the Nanopore MinION portable real-time long read sequencer. In October 2017 I moved to Norwich to begin a PhD at the UEA. My project is focussed on using the Nanopore MinION for real-time metagenomic sequencing of polar ocean samples to monitor polar microbe populations.