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"To­gether we’re stronger" – Sab­bat­ical in times of Corona

Jun 3, 2020

"Together we’re stronger" – The motto of the Bremen Town Musicians, is especially true in these difficult times. But it is not only since the outbreak of the corona pandemic that a picture of the famous sculpture in the center of Bremen adorns the profile picture at WhatsApp of marine chemist Carol Arnosti, who is currently doing research at the Max Planck Institute in Bremen.

 

“I have al­ways liked the Bre­men Town Mu­si­cians’ motto,” says Carol. The Amer­ican-born sci­ent­ist has close ties to Bre­men. Right after the found­ing of the local Max Planck In­sti­tute, she came to the Hanseatic city as a postdoc in 1993. At the in­sti­tute, she de­veloped a method to meas­ure the de­grad­a­tion of com­plex algal sug­ars in the sea­floor.

“I have had a strong con­nec­tion to the Max Planck In­sti­tute in Bre­men for dec­ades; it has shaped my sci­entific ca­reer as well as my per­sonal life,” says Carol. After all, she also met her hus­band here: An­dreas Teske is a mar­ine sci­ent­ist as well. He  did his PhD at the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy (MPIMM) dur­ing Car­ol's first stay – he was the first doc­toral stu­dent in Bre­men of found­ing dir­ector Bo Barker Jør­gensen. Since then, Carol has come back re­peatedly: at this point, for a total of eight longer vis­its in Bre­men, Bremer­haven, and Del­men­horst.

Carol Arnosti in the garden of the Bremen Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology.
Carol Arnosti in the garden of the Bremen Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology. Photo: Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology / K. Matthes

Carol Arnosti is now a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, on the east coast of the USA. The sab­bat­ical is a sort of spe­cial leave from work. She uses this period, dur­ing which she does not give lec­tures at her home uni­versity, to pur­sue her re­search to­gether with col­leagues in north­ern Ger­many, at the Max Planck In­sti­tute in Bre­men. She is stay­ing at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK) in Del­men­horst with her hus­band, who is cur­rently a Fel­low there, and their chil­dren. Des­pite the Corona re­stric­tions, she and her fam­ily have de­cided to stay in Ger­many.

Her cur­rent stay cen­ters on re­search into the de­grad­a­tion of large sugar mo­lecules, the poly­sac­char­ides, that make up a ma­jor part of phyto­plank­ton bio­mass. In co­oper­a­tion with col­leagues from the De­part­ment of Mo­lecu­lar Eco­logy, she is in­vest­ig­at­ing the dif­fer­ent de­grad­a­tion path­ways of these sug­ars. “Some­times bac­teria de­grade them very quickly, but some­times they are only de­graded un­der spe­cial con­di­tions or only by spe­cific bac­teria,” Carol ex­plains. How quickly and where ex­actly these sug­ars are de­graded in the ocean has an ef­fect on the car­bon cycle. “My work in Bre­men and in North Car­o­lina deals with dif­fer­ent as­pects of this prob­lem."

For­tu­nate tim­ing: The work aboard ship is done

Last spring, Carol and her team went to sea aboard the re­search ves­sel En­deavor to­gether with re­search­ers from the Max Planck In­sti­tute in Bre­men. They col­lec­ted wa­ter samples in the North At­lantic and car­ried out a num­ber of ex­per­i­ments at sea. “We were lucky to be at sea last year, be­cause now al­most all re­search ships are in port,” says Carol. Now she and her MPIMM col­leagues ana­lyze samples from the ex­ped­i­tion in the labor­at­ory. The corona virus has not hal­ted this work. “The Max Planck In­sti­tute is run­ning in re­duced op­er­a­tion, so for­tu­nately we can con­tinue to carry out im­port­ant meas­ure­ments in the lab,” says Carol. “Desk work I can do from our apart­ment at the HWK in Del­men­horst. This way I can ac­tu­ally ac­com­plish more than I would at home in Chapel Hill, be­cause all the labor­at­or­ies there have been closed since March. And for dis­cus­sions with my col­leagues at MPIMM, I don't have to worry about the dif­fer­ences in time zones.”

Car­ol's hus­band An­dreas can also con­tinue his work: He works to­gether with col­leagues in Bre­men and Olden­burg, and at the HWK, he writes re­ports and pub­lic­a­tions about his re­search.

Carol Arnosti on board RV Endeavor collecting samples for later analysis in Bremen. From left to right: Rudolf Amann (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology), Carol Arnosti and Sherif Ghobrial (both from the University of North Carolina) and Jan-Hendrik Hehemann (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology). Photo: C. Arnosti
Carol Arnosti on board RV Endeavor collecting samples for later analysis in Bremen. From left to right: Rudolf Amann (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology), Carol Arnosti and Sherif Ghobrial (both from the University of North Carolina) and Jan-Hendrik Hehemann (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology). Photo: C. Arnosti

A dif­fer­ent daily school routine on sab­bat­ical

And the fam­ily? Carol and An­dreas’ two daugh­ters also feel com­fort­able here, des­pite the dif­fi­cult cur­rent con­di­tions. They were very much look­ing for­ward to their school visit in Ger­many, since over the past twelve years they have already spent six semesters in local schools in Del­men­horst, with many of the same class­mates. Due to the school clos­ures, this is now only partly pos­sible, but at least the schools are start­ing to open again. “They en­joy their time here,” says Carol. “They have more free­dom than in the USA, which also strengthens class co­he­sion. For ex­ample, they can move around eas­ily by bi­cycle or bus – that's of­ten not pos­sible in the USA, you have to rely much more on a car. In spite of the re­stric­tions im­posed by the pan­demic, it is easy for us to get by.” The older daugh­ter even took ex­tra classes last year so that she could re­turn to her old Del­men­horst class. “Ac­tu­ally, it is very dif­fi­cult in the USA to take a semester off in high school. That's why our older daugh­ter or­gan­ized ahead last year and took sev­eral ad­di­tional high school courses in ad­vance, she’s tak­ing an­other one on­line. This way she could ac­com­pany us to Ger­many.”

Was it ever an op­tion, es­pe­cially at the be­gin­ning of the pan­demic, to leave the coun­try quickly and re­turn to the USA? “No, we never con­sidered that,” Carol says without hes­it­a­tion. “Our daugh­ters need their year-end re­port cards. In ad­di­tion, my hus­band's fam­ily lives here, and the Ger­man health care sys­tem is ex­cel­lent.” Then she al­lows us to look into her fam­ily his­tory: “An­dreas and I like to read thick tomes about his­tor­ical top­ics. Read­ing them really shows that there have been much worse times in his­tory. I also think about my grand­father, who as an of­ficer ca­det in World War I al­most died of the Span­ish flu, the last world­wide pan­demic with which Corona is now so of­ten com­pared.”

Car­ol’s con­clu­sion: Even in times of Corona she can en­joy her sab­bat­ical and do suc­cess­ful re­search. “We're very for­tu­nate, and we’re do­ing well,” she sums up. “Of course, our stay would be even bet­ter if it had gone as planned. But I en­joy this time very con­sciously. Be­cause who knows when I can come back here again – to my val­ued col­leagues and the re­source­ful town mu­si­cians!”

The most recent publications from the collaboration between Carol Arnosti and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology:

Arnosti C., Wietz M. Brink­hoff T., Hehem­ann J.-H., Probandt D., Zeugner L., Amann R. (in press): The biogeo­chem­istry of mar­ine poly­sac­char­ides: Sources, in­vent­or­ies, and bac­terial drivers of the car­bo­hydrate cycle. Annual Review of Marine Science

Re­intjes G., Fuchs B.M., Scharfe M., Wilt­shire K.H., Amann R., Arnosti C. (2020): Short-term changes in poly­sac­char­ide util­iz­a­tion mech­an­isms of mar­ine bac­terioplank­ton dur­ing a spring phyto­plank­ton bloom. Environ. Microbiol. 22: 1884-1900. doi:10.1111/1462-2920.14971.

Re­intjes G., Arnosti C., Fuchs B.M., Amann R. (2019): Selfish, shar­ing, and scav­en­ging bac­teria in the At­lantic Ocean: a biogeo­graphic study of mi­cro­bial sub­strate util­isa­tion. The ISME J, 13: 1119-1132. doi.org/10.1038/s41396-018-0326-3.

Arnosti C., Re­intjes G,. Amann R. (2018): A mech­an­istic mi­cro­bial un­der­pin­ning for the size-re­act­iv­ity con­tinuum of DOC de­grad­a­tion. Marine Chemistry: 206: 93-99. doi:10.1016/j.marchem.2018.09.008

Please dir­ect your quer­ies to:

Carol Arnosti

Max-Planck-Institut für Marine Mikrobiologie

carnosti@mpi-bremen.de

ht­tps://​mar­ine.unc.edu/​people/​fac­ulty/​arnosti/

Head of Press & Communications

Dr. Fanni Aspetsberger

MPI for Marine Microbiology
Celsiusstr. 1
D-28359 Bremen
Germany

Room: 

1345

Phone: 

+49 421 2028-9470

Dr. Fanni Aspetsberger
 
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