Kyle Mason-Jones

Junior Professor: Soil Microbial Interactions

Universität Tübingen
Geo- und Umweltforschungszentrum (GUZ)
Schnarrenbergstr. 94/96
72076 Tübingen

Room: 6U07
E-Mail: k.mason-jonesspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de

 

Main research interests

  • Soil microbial ecology and biogeochemistry
  • Virus ecology
  • Soil organic matter
  • Microbial storage compounds

Projects

  • Emmy Noether grant (DFG): “The devil in the details: Phage microhabitats as drivers of soil biogeochemistry”
  • Dutch Research Council (NWO) Talent Programme Veni: “Small but deadly: Soil bacteriophages as key drivers of bacterial death and carbon stabilization”
  • EcoEnergeticS: Economic and bioenergetic controls on microbial metabolism of complex substrates in soils (within SPP 2302: SoilSystems)
  • SoilProS: Soil biodiversity analysis for sustainable production systems

Academic education and professional experience

From April 2024
Junior Professor of Soil Microbial Interactions

Tübingen University

2021-2024
Junior research group leader

Department of Terrestrial Ecology
Netherlands Institute of Ecology
Wageningen, The Netherlands

2018-2021
Post-doctoral researcher

Department of Terrestrial Ecology
Netherlands Institute of Ecology
Wageningen, The Netherlands

2015-2018
Doctoral candidate (Dr rer. nat., summa cum laude)

Department of Agricultural Soil Science
University of Göttingen
Göttingen, Germany

2012-2014
Senior sustainability consultant

The Green House
Cape Town, South Africa

Selected publications

Mason-Jones, K., Breidenbach, A., Dyckmans, J., Banfield, C.C., Dippold, M.A. 2023. Intracellular carbon storage by microorganisms is an overlooked pathway of biomass growth. Nature Communications 2240. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-37713-4.

Camenzind, T., Mason-Jones, K., Mansour, I., Rillig, M. C., Lehmann, J. 2023. Formation of necromass-derived soil organic carbon determined by microbial death pathways. Nature Geoscience 16, 115-122. doi: 10.1038/s41561-022-01100-3

Breidenbach, A., Schleuss, P-M., Liu, S., Schneider, S., Dippold, M.A., de la Haye, T., Miehe, G., Heitkamp, F., Seeber, E., Mason-Jones, K.,  Xu, X.  Huanming, Y., Xu, J., Dorji, T. Gube, M., Norf, H., Meier, J., Guggenberger, G., Kuzyakov, Y., Spielvogel, S. 2022. Microbial functional changes mark irreversible course of Tibetan grassland degradation. Nature Communications, 13:2681. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-30047-7.

Mason-Jones, K., Robinson, S.L., Veen, G.F., Manzoni, S., van der Putten, W.H. 2021. Microbial storage and its implications for soil ecology. The ISME Journal. doi:10.1038/s41396-021-01110-w

Mason-Jones, K., Schmücker, N., Kuzyakov, Y. 2018. Contrasting effects of organic and mineral nitrogen challenge the N-Mining Hypothesis for soil organic matter priming. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 124, 38-46.

Kuzyakov, Y., Mason-Jones, K. 2018. Viruses in soil: Nano-scale undead drivers of microbial life, biogeochemical turnover and ecosystem functions. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 127, 305-317. doi: 10.1016/j.soilbio.2018.09.032