Marc W. Van Goethem, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Postdoctoral Fellow

Social Profile:

Research Interests

Dr. Marc W. Van Goethem aims to understand how microorganisms contribute to global climate cycling and how we can use the blueprints encoded in their genomes to improve our lives. Key research areas include carbon dioxide sequestration by photosynthetic cyanobacteria and establishing how biological soil crust communities physically stabilize surface soil to prevent wind erosion while increasing topsoil productivity.

Dr. Van Goethem's research has branched into many natural and human-built environments, including hot and cold deserts such as the Namib desert, Moab, and Antarctica, to solar panels and the abyssopelagic Southern Ocean. Through the lens of sequence information, Dr. Van Goethem hopes to unravel how microbial communities support life on Earth, and more importantly, how we can harness the power of these living machines for sequestering carbon dioxide against the milieu of a warming climate scenario.

Selected Publications

  • Multiple energy sources and metabolic strategies sustain microbial diversity in Antarctic desert soils
    M Ortiz , PM Leung , G Shelley , T Jirapanjawat , PA Nauer , MW Van Goethem , SK Bay , ZF Islam , K Jordaan , S Vikram , SL Chown , ID Hogg , TP Makhalanyane , R Grinter , DA Cowan , C Greening
    PNAS (2021)
  • A genomic catalog of Earth’s microbiomes
    S Nayfach, S Roux, R Seshadri, D Udwary, N Varghese, F Schulz, D Wu, et al., including MW Van Goethem
    Nature biotechnology 39 (4), 499-509 (2021)
  • Long-read metagenomics of soil communities reveals phylum-specific secondary metabolite dynamics
    MW Van Goethem, AR Osborn, BP Bowen, PF Andeer, TL Swenson, A Clum, R Riley, G He, M Koriabine, LC Sandor, M Yan, CG Daum, Y Yoshinaga, TP Makhalanyane, FP Garcia-Pichel, A Visel, L Pennacchio, RC O'Malley, TR Northen
    Comminucations Biology (2021)
  • Characteristics of wetting-induced bacteriophage blooms in biological soil crust
    MW Van Goethem, TL Swenson, G Trubl, S Roux, TR Northen
    MBio 10 (6) (2019)
  • Learning representations of microbe–metabolite interactions
    JT Morton, AA Aksenov, LF Nothias, JR Foulds, RA Quinn, MH Badri, TL Swenson, MW Van Goethem, TR Northen, Y Vazquez-Baeza, M Wang, NA Bokulich, A Watters, SJ Song, R Bonneau, PC Dorrestein, R Knight
    Nature methods 16 (12), 1306-1314 (2019)
  • A reservoir of ‘historical’ antibiotic resistance genes in remote pristine Antarctic soils
    MW Van Goethem, R Pierneef, OKI Bezuidt, Y Van De Peer, DA Cowan, TP Makhalanyane
    Microbiome 6 (1), 1-12 (2018)
  • Environmental drivers of viral community composition in Antarctic soils identified by viromics
    EM Adriaenssens, R Kramer, MW Van Goethem, TP Makhalanyane, I Hogg, DA Cowan
    Microbiome 5 (1), 1-14 (2017)
  • Assembling metagenomes, one community at a time
    AJ Van der Walt, MW Van Goethem, JB Ramond, TP Makhalanyane, Oleg Reva, Don Arthur Cowan
    BMC genomics 18 (1), 1-13 (2017)
  • Cyanobacteria and Alphaproteobacteria may facilitate cooperative interactions in niche communities
    MW Van Goethem, TP Makhalanyane, DA Cowan, A Valverde
    Frontiers in microbiology 8, 2099 (2017)
  • Characterization of bacterial communities in lithobionts and soil niches from Victoria Valley, Antarctica
    MW Van Goethem, TP Makhalanyane, A Valverde, SC Cary, DA Cowan
    FEMS microbiology ecology 92 (4), fiw051 (2016)

Education

  • Ph.D., Biotechnology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, 2015-2017
  • M.Sc., Genetics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, 2013-2014
  • B.Sc (Hons)., Genetics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, 2012
  • B.Sc., Genetics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, 2009-2011

Professional Profile

  • 2018-2021: Postdoctoral fellow, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA
  • 2020-2021: Postdoctoral fellow, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

Scientific and Professional Membership

  • Editor for Frontiers in Microbiology, Extreme Microbiology
  • Reviewer for FEMS Microbiology Ecology, PLOS One, PeerJ, and Frontiers in Microbiology

Awards

  • NRF Scarce Skills Doctoral Scholarship (2015 – 2017)
  • NRF Innovation Masters Scholarship (2013 – 2014)
  • NRF Travel Award to attend ISME16 in Montreal, Canada
  • NRF Travel Award to attend ISME15 in Seoul, South Korea
  • Best Oral Presentation at the Genomics Research Institute Seminar 2016
  • Identified as one of the Top 100 students in South Africa in 2017 through the Gradstar Program
  • Most publications by a student at the Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics (2016, 2017)

KAUST Affiliations

  • Red Sea Research Center (RSRC)
  • Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering Division (BESE) ​​

Research Interests Keywords

Microbial ecology Metagenomics Climate Change Genomics of Microbes Biological Soil Crust