Welcome to the Kleiner Lab!

Welcome to the Kleiner Lab!

Our lab is part of the Department of Plant & Microbial Biology and the Microbiomes and Complex Microbial Communities Cluster.

Our current projects focus on:

• Methods for Microbial Community Analyses
  • Development of cutting-edge methods for microbial community analyses focusing on metagenomics and high-resolution mass spectrometry based metaproteomics. A 20 minute overview presentation by Dr. Manuel Kleiner on what we can learn using metaproteomics is available here.
• Plant-Microbe Interactions
  • The development and evaluation of metaproteomics methods for root-associated microbes. This project is sponsored by the Plant Soil Microbial Community Consortium (PSMCC).
  • Decoding plant-microbiome interactions for improved crop resilience using wheat as a model. This project is a large collaborative effort of many faculty members from NCSU and several Danish Universities sponsored by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
• Diet-Microbiome Interactions in the Intestinal Tract
  • Harnessing metagenomics, metabolomics, metaproteomics, single cell imaging, and cultivation-based approaches to examine the mechanisms of interaction between intestinal microbiota and external substrates (diet) and host-derived substrates (host compound foraging). This project is supported by the NIH’s MIRA (Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award) grant.
  • Direct linkage of dietary components with metabolizers in the microbiota. This project is sponsored by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) and BASF.
  • The fate of dietary protein from different sources and its impact on the intestinal microbiota currently supported through a pilot grant from the Center for Gastrointestinal Biology and Disease (CGIBD).
• Phage-Microbiome Interactions
  • The discovery and characterization of virotrophs, a hypothesized group of specialized bacteria which are capable of utilizing bacteriophage as a sole nutrient source for growth and replication.
  • Tracking horizontal gene transfer by virus-like particles in microbiomes using transductomics and metaproteomics.
• Carbon Sequestration
  • The role of microbes in mineral precipitation resulting in exceptional fossil preservation and CO₂ sequestration sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
  • Factors governing energy efficiency of metabolism in free-living and symbiotic bacteria, looking specifically at a novel CO₂ fixation pathway.
  • Molecular ecophysiology of microorganisms with two carbon fixation pathways funded by the Binational Science Foundation (BSF).
• Horizontal Gene Transfer
  • The role of horizontal gene transfer in the metabolic evolution of bacterial symbionts.
• The saboteur’s tools: mechanisms for host reproductive manipulation by the bacterial arthropod endosymbiont Cardinium hertigii funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Fernanda with part of her switchgrass experiment for looking at plant-microbe interactions using metaproteomics.

Angie cultivating human gut isolates for a study on diet-microbiota interactions.

You can contact us by emailing Dr. Kleiner at manuel_kleiner@ncsu.edu

The Kleiner Lab would like to thank the following funding sources: