Travis Blake Meador, Ph.D.

Job Position: Head of Laboratory - Organic Geochemistry

Contact details

E-mail: travis.meador@bc.cas.cz
Web: https://www.bc.cas.cz/en/contacts/employee-list/contact/21572/
Room: Sadky 206C

Description

Travis has expertise in state-of-the-art techniques in both analytical chemistry and molecular biology to characterize the bulk chemical, functional group, and isotopic composition of physiologically and environmentally relevant molecules (i.e., biomarkers) found in natural organic matter and cultured organisms stemming from all three domains of life (i.e., Eukarya, Bacteria, and Archaea). These investigations have targeted a broad range of environmental settings. A similarly wide diversity of expertise defines Travis’s career as a microbial organic stable isotope biogeochemist and has driven his development of multivariate tools to digest complex, environmental data.

ORCID: 0000-0001-8255-5883

WEB OF SCIENCE: AAY-1599-2020

Research Interests

• Organic Geochemistry
• Biogeochemical Cycles
• Stable Isotopes
• Microbial Food Webs

 

 

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Organic Geochemistry Research Group

Biomarkin': BIOMARKer INventions and INnovations

What it is that I do here: an el­ev­ator con­ver­sa­tion:
Firstly, can you appreciate the importance of plant life for the planet? …Over centuries we have learned the relative importance and cultivation practices of many plant species: for crops, medicine, decoration, architecture, etc. Perhaps most importantly, plants on land and in the ocean are a natural sustenance that take carbon from the atmosphere, turn it into living biomass, and produce the oxygen that we breathe.
EQUALLY IMPORTANT as carbon assimilation by photosynthesis, is the removal of organic carbon via degradation of living biomass. Humans have also learned to benefit from this natural process; examples include composting, treating wastewater, and even brewing!
WE HAVE ONLY BEGUN to explore the many varieties of carbon degradation mechanisms on Earth. I am currently researching these and other capabilities of micro-organisms in marine sediments…

Ongoing research themes:

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a black box of or­ganic mo­lecules in both the lo­gist­ical sense, that we vaguely un­der­stand how it cycles but do not know the un­der­ly­ing mech­an­isms that con­trol this cyc­ling, and in the aero­naut­ical sense, that DOM re­cords the mo­lecu­lar “con­ver­sa­tions” of events that have tran­spired. In­deed, DOM is of­ten de­pic­ted as a cent­ral com­pon­ent in mar­ine food webs, hav­ing im­port­ant ties to all do­mains of life and the global C cycle; however, the pro­cesses that con­trol its dis­tri­bu­tions and fluxes re­main poorly defined and fur­ther in­vest­ig­a­tion of its com­pos­i­tion and re­act­iv­ity is ne­ces­sary to re­solve en­vir­on­mental phe­nom­ena and an­thro­po­genic for­cings.

Biogeo­chem­ical Net­works: The gen­er­a­tion of large OTUs, geo­chem­istry, lipidomic data­sets has al­lowed for sci­ent­ists to ex­plore the re­la­tion­ship and po­ten­tial drivers of mi­cro­bial life be­low the sea­floor. Us­ing multi-vari­ate ana­lysis tech­niques, I am co­ordin­at­ing the res­ults and ef­forts of a team of sci­ent­ists to identify dia­gnostic trends in the dis­tri­bu­tion of mi­crobes and their cell mem­brane bio­mark­ers.

 

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Stable Isotope Facility

Expertise and instrumentation to explore stable isotope distributions in soil & aquatic environments

Contact: isbb-irms @ bc . cas . cz

ABOUT

We are primarily a collaborative service facility that aims to enable and develop stable isotope applications and to answer congruent research questions. We support interdisciplinary investigations of soil and aquatic habitats by offering scientific consultation, student training, and a broad range of instrumentation and approaches for determining stable isotopic ratios of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and hydrogen. Our commitment is to scientific merit and publication of the stable isotope ratio measurements generated by our combined thought, time, resources, and facilities.

Initiated in February 2018, the facility is currently in an acquisition phase in terms of both personnel and instrumentation. We project for our analytical services to be ‘on-line’ by Autumn 2018, including:

• d¹³C, d¹⁵N, d³⁴S solids
• d²H and d¹⁸O of solids, alcohols
• d¹³C and d¹⁸O of carbonates
• d²H, d¹⁸O of water
• d¹³C and d²H of methane and C_2-6 gases
• d¹³C and d¹⁸O of atmosphere CO₂
• d¹⁸O dissolved of dissolved O₂
• d¹⁵N and d¹⁸O of nitrate
• d¹⁵N and d¹⁸O of N₂ and N₂O
• d¹³C, d¹⁸O, d²H of fatty acid methyl esters, n-alkanes, and other biomarkers
• d¹³C, d¹⁵N, d²H of amino acids
• d¹³C,d²H of monosaccharides
• d¹³C of organic acids

 

INSTRUMENTATION

The Stable Isotope Facility is equipped with a Thermo Scientific^TM 253 Plus^TM 10 kV IRMS configured for the for determining the stable isotopic composition of C, N, S, O, and H introduced as  CO₂, N₂, SO₂, O₂, H₂, CO, N₂O, or CH₄ via continuous flow from the peripheral instruments listed below.

• SmartEA Isolink (Thermo Scientific^TM) converts solid and liquid samples to CO₂, N₂, SO₂, H₂, and/or CO gases via flash combustion and, in a single injection, allows for determination of d ¹³C, d ¹⁵N, d³⁴S in samples with C:S ratios up to 10³.

• Trace 1310 with GC Isolink II, Conflo-IV and tandem ISQ (Thermo Scientific^TM) for separation of > C₁ gases and combustion/pyrolysis for determination of stable isotopic composition. Analytes may also be channeled to the ISQ for simultaneous generation of MS2 spectra to support compound identification. The GC is equipped with both standard and PTV injectors

• GasBench II (Thermo Scientific^TM) with cold trap allows for pre-concentration, purification, and separation of CO₂, N₂, SO₂, O₂, H₂, CO, N₂O, and CH₄ introduced via autosampler injection of headspace samples as well as direct injection onto sample loops (10-100µL).

• LC IsoLink for separation and conversion of organic compounds to CO₂ for IRMS analysis. The LC flow may be split to an ICPMS/MS detector, allowing for simultaneous analysis of stable isotopic and metal compositions. LC column chromatography allows separation of targeted compound groups (i.e., mono- and oligo-saccharides, sugar alcohols, amino acids and organic acids) as well as non-targeted mixtures of complex natural substances with molecular weights ranging up to 1000 kDa.

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Curriculum vitae

Education

• 2008.  Ph.D., Oceanography, University of California San Diego - Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, USA.

A spatial deconvolution of molecular signals in oceanic dissolved organic matter Available: http://repositories.cdlib.org/sio/techreport/73

Principle Investigator: L. Aluwihare, Geosciences Research Division 

• 2001.  B.S. Marine Science, University of South Carolina, USA, summa cum laude

Professional Experience

• 2020-present. Assistant Professor, University of South Bohemia, Faculty of Science, Department of Ecosystem Biology, České Budějovice, Czechia
• 2018-present. Head of Laboratory / Group Leader, Biology Centre CAS, Soil & Water Research Infrastructure, České Budějovice, Czechia
• 2016 – 2018. Research Associate, University of Bremen, Germany

Planktonic Archaeal Phosphorus Affinity and Apportionment (DFG research grant awarded to T.B. Meador)

• 2010 – 2015. Postdoc, MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany.

      Deep subsurface Archaea: carbon cycle, life strategies, and role in sedimentary ecosystems (funded by an ERC Advanced grant awarded to K-U. Hinrichs)

• 2008 – 2010. Postdoc, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, USA. 

Isolation and characterization of natural dissolved organic phosphorus (funded by a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant awarded to D.J. Repeta)

• 2008. Postdoc, Hellenic Center for Marine Research, Anavyssos, Greece. 

Development and application of ultra- and nano- filtration technologies to environmental studies of dissolved organic matter and nutrients (funded by a Greek Secretary of Research and Technology, Ministry of Development grant awarded to A. Gogou and D.J. Repeta)

 

Languages: native: English; advanced: German, Spanish; beginner: Greek, Portuguese, Czech

 

RESEARCH SUMMARY

ORCID: 0000-0001-8255-5883

WEB OF SCIENCE: AAY-1599-2020

Monographs - Doctoral Thesis: Meador, T.B. 2008. A spatial deconvolution of molecular signals in oceanic dissolved organic matter, Ph.D., Univ. of California San Diego, CA, USA. http://repositories.cdlib.org/sio/techreport/73

 

Other Professional Activities

English/Science Editor, American Journal Experts and ScienceDocs Inc. (2010-2015)

 

TEACHING & MENTORING 

Courses Taught

2019-present  Biogeochemistry (Co-instructor), U. South Bohemia (KBE 117)

2018/2019       Stable Isotopes in Environmental Sciences, Ecology and Physiology (KEBR 620)

Lecturer

2020-2022       IAEA Virtual Regional Training Course on Isotope Hydrology

 

Community Outreach

Otevřena Věda (Open Science) Internship program, Budweis, Czechia

Guest English instructor, Oberschule am Leibnitzplatz, Bremen, Germany

Big Brother for Big Brothers & Big Sisters of San Diego County youth outreach program

 

 

Teaching

Biogeochemistry
University of South Bohemia

Publications

More publications