Microscale Applications Group Lead
Dr. Malmstrom is a Staff Scientist and leader of the Microscale Applications group. Before joining the JGI in 2010, he made the first ever measurements of in situ growth rates and carbon consumption of SAR11 bacteria, the most abundant bacterial group in the ocean. Later during his postdoctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he developed a high throughput approach for isolating individual bacterial cells and amplifying their genetic material, thus bypassing the need to culture these microbes in the lab. After joining the JGI, he formed the Microscale Applications group to operate a similar single-cell genomics pipeline that provides JGI users access to the genomes of uncultured microbes. His group also handles the Stable Isotope Probing (SIP) Metagenomics pipeline that reveals in situ functional activities of specific microbial groups within complex communities. The Microscale Applications group also carries out custom preparative work for difficult user projects, including those that require fluorescence activated cell sorting and non-standard molecular protocols. Finally, his team utilizes new technologies, e.g. acoustic liquid transfer and microfluidics, to minimize molecular biology reactions, increase throughput, and enable processing of samples that would not be possible with traditional approaches.
