Prof. Dr. Marie Schölmerich

Prof. Dr.  Marie Schölmerich

Prof. Dr. Marie Schölmerich

Assistant Professor at the Department of Environmental Systems Science

ETH Zürich

Professur für Umweltmikrobiologie

CHN F 33

Universitätstrasse 16

8092 Zürich

Switzerland

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At the Schölmerich Lab, we study anaerobic microorganisms that are key players in the capture and conversion of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). These anaerobic bacteria and archaea employ the most ancient CO2 fixation pathway - the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway.

Our main projects include:

1.    Illuminating the composition of microbial communities in anoxic environments. Our focus is to identify both recognized and novel bacteria and archaea playing a role in the cycling of CO2 and CH4.

2.    Discovering and examining extrachromosomal elements - plasmids and phages in acetogenic bacteria, and plasmids and viruses in methanogenic archaea.

3.    Investigating the emergence and functional role of intrinsic disorder (unstructured regions in proteins) in these organisms.

To accomplish these goals, we employ a combination of computational and laboratory-based methods. These include culture-independent approaches like fieldwork, metagenomics, and computational biology, as well as genome-informed cultivation approaches and biochemical methods. Our overarching mission is to decipher the influence of these anaerobic microorganisms on biogeochemical cycles, and to identify the molecular elements and mechanisms driving these processes. 

Marie C. Schölmerich is Assistant Professor of Environmental Microbiology (Tenure Track) at the Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics, Department of Environmental Sciences, since 2023.

She was born 1989 in Berlin, Germany.

Marie C. Schölmerich received her B.Sc. in Biochemistry from Leipzig University, Germany, in 2011, and her M.Sc. in Molecular Biosciences in 2013, and Ph.D. in Biology in 2018 from Frankfurt University, Germany. She was a junior group leader at Hamburg University, Germany, from 2018 – 2020 and later went on to become a Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley, CA, USA, a position she held from 2021 to 2023.

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Course Catalogue

Autumn Semester 2024

Number Unit
701-1302-00L Term Paper 2: Seminar
701-1303-00L Term Paper 1: Writing