TEMPERTON LAB

I am an Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Exeter. Following a seven-year career as a software engineer, I returned to science and received my Ph.D in Microbiology from Queen's University Belfast in 2011, researching how marine microbes store phosphate in response to low-nutrient conditions found in the oceans. Fascinated by how nutrient limitation can drive genome streamlining, I moved to Oregon State to complete a postdoc in Steve Giovannoni's lab. Whilst there, I was involved in numerous projects including metaproteomics, single-cell genomics and metagenomics to evaluate functional and taxonomic diversity of the Pelagibacterales, one of the most abundant organisms on Earth. During this time, I was involved in the discovery of the pelagiphages, viruses that infect the Pelagibacterales, and putatively the most abundant viruses on Earth. Thus began a deep interest in phage biology and their role in global carbon biogeochemistry. After a second postdoc at Plymouth..