Assist.-Prof. Dr. Shaul Pollak Pasternak
Assistant Professor at the Division of Microbial Ecology
☎ +43 1 4277 91241
✉ shaul.pollak.pasternak(at)univie.ac.at
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Research Profiles
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Lab Website
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Publications Overview
Bacterial activity has shaped our world for billions of years, and is still critical for the function of virtually all ecosystems on earth. Shaul Pollak is interested in how bacterial interactions mediate functions like protecting plants from pathogens or carbon cycling in soils and oceans. Shaul loves questions that span levels of organization, like how an interaction between specific genes on a chromosome translate to planetary-scale changes in carbon fluxes. To answer these questions, Shaulʼs group integrates genomics, high-throughput experiments and genetics with ecological/ evolutionary theory and machine learning. Current projects include using “genomic dark matter” to predict carbon fluxes in soils, as well as investigating the effects of environmental change on plant-bacteria genetic interactions. Another focus is the evolutionary genomics of the most abundant photosynthetic organism on earth: the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus marinus.
Publications
Yu XA, Strachan CR, Herbold CW, Lang M, Gasche C, Makristathis A et al. Genome-wide sweeps create ecological units in the human gut microbiome. Nature. 2026 Jul 2;655(8121):202-209. doi: 10.1038/s41586-026-10476-w
Becker JW, Pollak S, Berta-Thompson JW, Becker KW, Braakman R, Dooley KD et al. Novel isolates expand the physiological diversity of Prochlorococcus and illuminate its macroevolution. mBio. 2024 Nov 13;15(11):e03497-23. doi: 10.1128/mbio.03497-23
Guseva K, Mohrlok M, Alteio L, Schmidt H, Pollak S, Kaiser C. Bacteria face trade-offs in the decomposition of complex biopolymers. PLoS Computational Biology. 2024 Aug 8;20(8):e1012320. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012320
Shan X, Wasson PA, Rao YQ, Backer S, Leal L, Albright VC et al. Simple Genomic Traits Predict Rates of Polysaccharide Biodegradation. Environmental Science and Technology. 2024 Jul 23;58(29):13000-13009. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.4c02769
Gralka M, Pollak S, Cordero OX. Genome content predicts the carbon catabolic preferences of heterotrophic bacteria. Nature Microbiology. 2023 Oct;8(10):1799-1808. doi: 10.1038/s41564-023-01458-z
Microbiomes Drive Planetary Health
Shaul Pollak Pasternak is part of the FWF-funded Cluster of Excellence (CoE)
