Dr. Dennis Metze

Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science

Dennis has been part of TER since spring 2020, when he joined Andreas Richter’s group as a PhD student. For his doctoral research, he investigated how soil bacteria respond to drought, warming, and elevated atmospheric CO₂. This included establishing a new approach to measure in situ growth rates of individual bacterial taxa in dry soils by combining quantitative stable isotope probing (qSIP) and ¹⁸O-water vapor labeling.

As a postdoctoral researcher, he now focuses on a more holistic characterization of the active soil microbiome, its role in soil functioning, and response to environmental change. This involves quantifying microbial activities beyond cell replication, reliably measuring the in situ growth of other microbial groups, such as fungi, and finding generalizable growth patterns across experiments.

Research Topics and Interests

Microbial growth, activity, and dormancy
Characterizing different fractions of the active soil microbiome and their response to global change
Identification of bacterial life history strategies by measuring their phenotypic response across environmental conditions
Automation and throughput optimization of qSIP experiments

Publications

Canarini A, Fuchslueger L, Schnecker J, Metze D, Nelson DB, Kahmen A et al. Soil fungi remain active and invest in storage compounds during drought independent of future climate conditions. Nature Communications. 2024 Nov 29;15(1):10410. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-54537-y

Bhattarai B, Richter A , Metze D, Sigurdsson BD, Sigurdsson P, Leblans N et al. Influence of soil warming magnitude and duration on soluble sugar pool in fine roots and rhizomes of subarctic grasslands: Differences at species and plant community level adaptation. Plant Stress. 2024 Mar;11:100406. doi: 10.1016/j.stress.2024.100406

Metze D, Schnecker J, de Carlan CLN, Bhattarai B, Verbruggen E, Ostonen I et al. Soil warming increases the number of growing bacterial taxa but not their growth rates. Science Advances. 2024 Feb 23;10(8):eadk6295. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adk6295

Metze D, Schnecker J, Canarini A, Fuchslueger L, Koch BJ, Stone BW et al. Microbial growth under drought is confined to distinct taxa and modified by potential future climate conditions. Nature Communications. 2023 Dec;14(1):5895. Epub 2023 Sept 22. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-41524-y

Metze D, Popp D, Schwab L, Keller NS, Da Rocha UN, Richnow HH et al. Temperature management potentially affects carbon mineralization capacity and microbial community composition of a shallow aquifer. FEMS microbiology ecology. 2021 Feb 1;97(2):fiaa261. doi: 10.1093/femsec/fiaa261