I am a Biologist and Microbiologist with a MSc in Environmental Microbiology (UniAndes, Colombia) and a PhD in Microbial Ecology from UEA (UK).

I recently finished a postdoc at Earlham Institute, working for the GROW Colombia project, focused on studying the microbial ecology of soils associated to different crops (sugarcane and coffee).

I finished my PhD in 2018, under the supervision of Professor J Colin Murrell, where I characterised novel soil and phyllosphere microorganisms that use isoprene as their sole source of C using techniques including stable isotope probing (SIP), amplicon sequencing and metagenome analysis.

Previously, as part of the CIMIC lab at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, I isolated and studied ANFO-degrading bacteria from an open coal mine pit and their expression of nitrogen cycle genes in presence of the explosive.

Key Publications

Larke-Mejía, N.L, Carrión, O. ,Crombie, A.T. , McGenity, T.J. and Murrell, J. C. Sphingopyxis sp. strain OPL5, an isoprene-degrading bacterium from the Sphingomonadaceae family isolated from oil palm leaves. Microorganisms. Submitted Sept 2, 2020. Resubmitted Sept 29, 2020.

Larke-Mejía NL, Crombie AT, Pratscher J, McGenity TJ and Murrell JC (2019) Novel Isoprene Degrading Proteobacteria From Soil and Leaves Identified by Cultivation and Metagenomics Analysis of Stable Isotope Probing Experiments. Front. Microbiol. 10:2700. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2019.02700

Carrión, O., Larke-Mejía, N.L., Gibson, L. et al. Gene probing reveals the widespread distribution, diversity and abundance of isoprene-degrading bacteria in the environment. Microbiome 6, 219 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-018-0607-0

Crombie, A.T., Larke-Mejia, N.L., Emery, H., Dawson, R., Pratscher, J., Murphy, G.P., McGenity, T.J. and Murrell, J.C. (2018) Poplar phyllosphere harbors disparate isoprene-degrading bacteria. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA), 115(51), 13081-13086. doi:10.1073/pnas.1812668115

Rachael E. Antwis, Sarah M. Griffiths, Xavier A. Harrison, Paz Aranega-Bou, Andres Arce, Aimee S. Bettridge, Francesca L. Brailsford, Alexandre de Menezes, Andrew Devaynes,Kristian M. Forbes, Ellen L. Fry, Ian Goodhead, Erin Haskell, Chloe Heys, Chloe James, Sarah R. Johnston, Gillian R. Lewis, Zenobia Lewis, Michael C. Macey, Alan McCarthy, James E. McDonald, Nasmille L. Mejia-Florez, David O’Brien, Chlo´e Orland, Marco Pautasso, William D. K. Reid, Heather A. Robinson,Kenneth Wilson and William J. Sutherland. Fifty important research questions in microbial ecology. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 2017, Vol. 93, No. 5