Dr Li Bi

Theme 3 - Associate Researcher

 

Viromic and metagenomic insights into the diversity and ecological roles of viruses in soils

Viruses are extremely abundant and ubiquitous in the environment, and significantly contribute to various marine ecosystem processes such as biogeochemical nutrient cycling, microbiome community assembly and functional performance, and host evolutionary dynamics. However, whether and how soil viruses have the same role in soil as marine counterparts is poorly understood. Li Bi’s research will use the metagenomic approaches including total soil metagenomes and size-fractionation viral metagenome (virome) to characterize the abundance, diversity and community compositions of viruses, and their interactions with other organisms in the complex soil environment.

Li received a Master of Environmental Science from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and completed her PhD in Agricultural Science at the University of Melbourne. During her PhD, she aimed to understand how viruses regulate microbial communities and biogeochemical processes in soils, particularly under environmental stress conditions such as aridity and soil acidification. Using multi-omics approaches, she demonstrated that viruses can influence key microbial processes in carbon, sulfur, and iron cycling through auxiliary metabolic genes, thereby contributing to ecosystem functions.