Jenny Zhang

Developing wholistic methodologies for studying the microbial-material/environment interactions, particularly in the contexts of coral bleaching, photosynthesis and biofouling.

 

Research Area

My team is highly interdisciplinary, and we are interested in addressing knowledge gaps in how microbes (particularly photosynthetic microorganisms) relate to each other, the environment and to synthetic materials. In particularly, we are interested in why these relationships sometimes break down (for example in coral bleaching), or how to enhance or disrupt these relationships to facilitate improved develop new climate solutions (for example towards bioremediation). Towards this, we develop tailored chemical biology and biophysical methods, such as time-resolved spectroelectrochemistries and in operando microscopies, to probe the bioenergetics and physiology of the photosynthetic microorganisms under various environments and environmental stresses. We then try to relate this finer grain knowledge to the behaviour and patterns of the organisms in the environment, often in collaboration with others in Biochemistry, Earth Sciences or Zoology.

 

Project Interests

We are interested in developing projects to address knowledge gaps within the pressing problem of climate change-induced coral bleaching. In particular, we have already developed many new tools that can be used to probe into the bioenergetics, light utilisation and redox chemistries of dinoflagellates in vivo. These can be expanded to other more realistic model organisms with and without their symbionts.

We are also interested in applying our unique chemical biology toolbox to address other issues in bioremediation – for example understanding how microbial consortia work together to remove waste and toxin from the environment.