Researcher
Research Infrastructures for marine biological resources Department
Bioinformatics, Computational Analysis & Data Management
Tel. +39 081 5833260
E-mail: michael.tangherlini(at)szn.it
Research Interests
My research interests are focused on the field of microbial ecology, especially in deep-sea benthic ecosystems. During my PhD and post-doc work at the Polytechnic University of Marche, I learned and developed an end-to-end approach to microbial ecology: from sediment sampling (as member of the scientific personnel onboard of research vessels in campaigns set in the Northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Ross Sea and the Mediterranean Sea) to bioinformatic data production and analysis, I was able to develop a strategy for the analysis and comparison of microbial and viral assemblages associated with a wide range of marine ecosystems, spanning from coastal to deep-sea sediments, also including extreme ecosystems. In particular, I focused my work on nucleic acid pools which are often neglected in the field of molecular ecology, such as that of extracellular and viral DNA, and their interactions with prokaryotic assemblages (e.g. mobile genetic elements) and their overall ecological implications. I was also able to collaborate with several international institutes, such as JAMSTEC and the J. Craig Venter Institute, extending the network of collaborations to foreign countries and learning how to use new tools and new approaches for my studies.
Selected Publications
Corinaldesi, C., Tangherlini, M., Luna, G. M., & Dell'Anno, A. (2014). Extracellular DNA can preserve the genetic signatures of present and past viral infection events in deep hypersaline anoxic basins. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 281(1780), 20133299.
O’Dowd, C., Ceburnis, D., Ovadnevaite, J., Bialek, J., Stengel, D. B., Zacharias, M., ... & Decesari, S. (2015). Connecting marine productivity to sea-spray via nanoscale biological processes: Phytoplankton Dance or Death Disco?. Scientific Reports, 5.
Pacton, M., Wacey, D., Corinaldesi, C., Tangherlini, M., Kilburn, M. R., Gorin, G. E., ... & Vasconcelos, C. (2014). Viruses as new agents of organomineralization in the geological record. Nature communications, 5, ncomms5298.
Tangherlini, M., Dell’Anno, A., Allen, L. Z., Riccioni, G., & Corinaldesi, C. (2016). Assessing viral taxonomic composition in benthic marine ecosystems: reliability and efficiency of different bioinformatic tools for viral metagenomic analyses. Scientific reports, 6.
Danovaro, R., Canals, M., Tangherlini, M., Dell’Anno, A., Gambi, C., Lastras, G., ... & Pedrosa-Pàmies, R. (2017). A submarine volcanic eruption leads to a novel microbial habitat. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1(6), s41559-017.
Aylagas, E., Borja, Á., Tangherlini, M., Dell'Anno, A., Corinaldesi, C., Michell, C. T., ... & Rodríguez-Ezpeleta, N. (2017). A bacterial community-based index to assess the ecological status of estuarine and coastal environments. Marine pollution bulletin, 114(2), 679-688.
Tangherlini, M., Corinaldesi, C., & Dell'Anno, A. (2012). Viral metagenomics: a new and complementary tool for environmental quality assessment. Chemistry and Ecology, 28(5), 497-501.
