Dr Sabine Lengger

I am an organic biogeochemist: I use chemicals of micro- and other organisms to find out what they eat, where they get their food from, and how much greenhouse gas they produce. I then use these molecules to answer questions about past environments - from thousands to hundreds of millions of years ago. In order to answer more questions and find better answers, I develop and improve analytical methods for these chemicals.

Keywords: Biogeochemistry; Stable isotopes; Carbon cycling; Paleoclimate; Environmental Chemistry; Organic Geochemistry

My research topics have developed out of a strong interest in analytical techniques for detection of biomarkers / polar molecules and microbial ecology / biogeochemistry. I worked on Archaea (production and biodegradation of lipids) in sediments, on products of microbial biodegradation of oil, on polar compounds (sterols) in sponges and fossil concretions. Now, I am working on a way to enable the determination of the stable isotopic composition of large, polar biomarkers for the methane cycle. For my research, I use highly developed analytical methods such as HPLC-ESI-MSn, GC-IRMS, GCxGC-TOFMS and GC-IRMS. I am also very interested in the use of advanced data processing and statistical methods for geochemistry, in order to investigate patterns of naturally produced and anthropogenic compounds in the environment, and to compare recent organisms or samples with fossil biomarker distributions.