Vice Professor LIN Wei's Ph.D. thesis is selected Springer Theses Series and is awarded UCAS-Springer Award for outstanding doctoral dissertation, whose thesis is Diversity, Biomineralization and Rock Magnetism of Magnetotactic Bacteria, nominated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences as an outstanding thesis in 2011.

LIN Wei in his thesis develops a new approach for effectively collecting, purifying and characterizing uncultivated magnetotactic bacteria,and investigates the diversity, biomineralization and rock magnetic properties of magnetotactic bacteria, and evaluates their contributions to environmental reconstruction and sedimentary magnetism through interdisciplinary approaches.

Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) synthesize intracellular nano-sized minerals of magnetite and/or greigite magnetosomes for magnetic orientation. They play important roles in global iron cycling and sedimentary magnetism, and have a broad range of potential applications in both biotechnological and biomedical fields. However, because the majority of MTB in nature remain unculturable, our understanding of these specific bacteria remains fairly limited. This thesis describes the development of a novel approach for effectively collecting, purifying and characterizing uncultivated magnetotactic bacteria. The diversity, genomic information and rock magnetic properties of various uncultivated MTB are investigated and characterized using a combination of biological and geophysical methods. The results will lead to a better understanding of the biogeography and biomineralization mechanisms of MTB in nature, and improve our knowledge of the contributions of MTB to biogeochemical cycles of elements and sedimentary magnetism.