Jennifer Bhatnagar

About

Jennifer Bhatnagar is an Associate Professor of Biology and the Director of the Biogeoscience Program at Boston University. Her research focuses on the ecology, chemistry, and biology of microorganisms in the environment, with particular emphasis on fungi. She studies the biochemical mechanisms that microbes use to drive large-scale processes such as carbon and nutrient cycling within ecosystems. Her work employs biochemical analyses and sequencing technologies to identify direct, mechanistic links between the genetic architecture, community structure, and biochemical functions of microbes in complex environments. Her current research includes investigating the molecular mechanisms and biogeochemical consequences of fungal species interactions, the biochemical processes involved in plant-fungal symbioses, and the responses of microbial communities to climate change. She aims to understand how microbial interactions influence ecosystem-level biogeochemistry, the molecular basis of functional diversity among mycorrhizal fungi, and how microbial communities drive ecosystem responses to climate-induced changes. Her contributions advance understanding of microbial roles in environmental processes and their responses to global change.

Research topics

• Biology
• Computational biology
• Genetics
• Computer Science
• Ecology
• Evolutionary biology
• Astronomy
• Environmental science
• Agroforestry
• World Wide Web

Selected publications

• A genomic catalog of Earth’s microbiomes

  Nature Biotechnology · 2020 · 963 citations

  The reconstruction of bacterial and archaeal genomes from shotgun metagenomes has enabled insights into the ecology and evolution of environmental and host-associated microbiomes. Here we applied this approach to >10,000 metagenomes collected from diverse habitats covering all of Earth's continents and oceans, including metagenomes from human and animal hosts, engineered environments, and natural and agricultural soils, to capture extant microbial, metabolic and functional potential. This compre…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Unraveling the functional dark matter through global metagenomics

  Nature · 2023 · 193 citations

  . Using massively parallel graph-based clustering, we group these proteins into 106,198 novel sequence clusters with more than 100 members, doubling the number of protein families obtained from the reference genomes clustered using the same approach. We annotate these families on the basis of their taxonomic, habitat, geographical and gene neighbourhood distributions and, where sufficient sequence diversity is available, predict protein three-dimensional models, revealing novel structures. Overa…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Back to Roots: The Role of Ectomycorrhizal Fungi in Boreal and Temperate Forest Restoration

  Frontiers in Forests and Global Change · 2020 · 116 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Temperate and boreal forests are increasingly suffering from anthropic degradation. Ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) are symbionts with most temperate and boreal forest trees, providing their hosts with soil nutrients and water in exchange for plant carbon. This group of fungi is involved in woody plants’ survival and growth and helps plants tolerate harsh environmental conditions. Here, we describe the current understanding of how EMF can benefit temperate and boreal forest restoration projects. We…

  DOI

• Environmental microbiome engineering for the mitigation of climate change

  Global Change Biology · 2023-01-20 · 77 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Environmental microbiome engineering is emerging as a potential avenue for climate change mitigation. In this process, microbial inocula are introduced to natural microbial communities to tune activities that regulate the long-term stabilization of carbon in ecosystems. In this review, we outline the process of environmental engineering and synthesize key considerations about ecosystem functions to target, means of sourcing microorganisms, strategies for designing microbial inocula, methods to d…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Soil Microbes Trade-Off Biogeochemical Cycling for Stress Tolerance Traits in Response to Year-Round Climate Change

  Frontiers in Microbiology · 2020 · 72 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Winter air temperatures are rising faster than summer air temperatures in high-latitude forests, increasing the frequency of soil freeze/thaw events in winter. To determine how climate warming and soil freeze/thaw cycles affect soil microbial communities and the ecosystem processes they drive, we leveraged the Climate Change across Seasons Experiment (CCASE) at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the northeastern United States, where replicate field plots receive one of three climate treatm…

  DOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Molecular mechanisms and biogeochemical consequences of decomposer species interactions during succession in ecosystems

  NSF · $661k · 2015–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Colin Averill

  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

  224 shared

• Rytas Vilgalys

  Duke University

  219 shared

• Hui-ling Liao

  216 shared

• Ryan Tappero

  Brookhaven National Laboratory

  189 shared

• Edward Brzostek

  West Virginia University

  187 shared

• Haihua Wang

  186 shared

• Nahuel Policelli

  Centro Científico Tecnológico Patagónico

  168 shared

• Nahuel Policelli

  10 shared

Similar researchers at Boston University

• David J. Waxmanh-97
• Jerry Chenh-96
• Richard B. Primackh-83