Home | The Schartup Lab

Global Biogeochemical Health @ The Schartup Lab

We study how trace metals affect our planet and our health

📢🚨It’s official: we are no longer just the trace Hg lab @scripps_ocean. As of this week, we’re also the trace: As, B, Cd, Cr, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, Mo, Ni, U, V, Se and Hg lab. 🧑‍🔬🧪⚗️
This upgrade took a few brains 🧠, a huge effort from @west.johannes & @cat.sephus, lots of help from @agilenttechnologies , and even more help from good old HCl and HNO₃ to make sure our certified reference waters came out 👩🏽‍🍳 💋👌
Once we clear our own (massive) backlog of samples and a few more tweaks, we might just be open to running yours….😉
#Astrobiology #TraceMetals #ICPMS #CleanLab #MarineChemistry #LabUpgrade #geochemistry #mercurymarine

In the Schartup Lab we used to kill, crush, digest, and distill 🙅‍♀️🔥💥💣🔨
Now we culture and nurture with patience and skill 😊🦠🌿
Algae and microbes from the deep ocean
Setting whole new questions in motion 🌊🧪#astrobiology #cosmobiology #OceanScience #MarineMicrobes #DeepSea #LabLife #Biogeochemistry #MicrobialEcology #Oceanography #ScienceLife @simonsfoundation @scripps_ocean @ucsandiego

Another big news from the @Schartup_lab that never made it to Instagram 🙃… our collaboration with Elaine Hsiao’s lab came out in @cellpress Cell Host & Microbe! 🎉
This project actually started at a Scialog on #Microbiome, #Neurobiology and #Disease, where Elaine and I first workshopped and pitched the idea that #gut #microbes could be engineered to protect people from dietary #methylmercury exposure. Fast forward a few years (and a pandemic), and we made it happen! We built a bacterium that transforms methylmercury (toxic, bioavailable) into inorganic mercury (less harmful and more easily eliminated) — and showed it actually works in vivo and reduces maternal-fetal transfer of the #neurotoxicant 🐭
Paper: https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/abstract/S1931-3128(25)00142-8
@scripps_ocean press release: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/engineered-bacterium-could-shield-people-mercury-toxicity and @ucla press release https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/reducing-mercury-absorption-food
Huge congrats to all the authors (including our own @eriktpaulson who is now a master tissue digester) for taking this idea from a workshop pitch to a published study and beyond!

In May, we celebrated a huge milestone for the Schartup Lab: our first PhD graduate! 🎉 Hannah Adams defended her dissertation with a flawless presentation of her two published papers and some very cool new data on the microbial drivers of #mercury methylation right off the @scripps_ocean Pier, using machine learning to make sense of it all.
She marked the occasion the only way a proper oceanographer knows how. On a boat 🚤🌊 + family and friends
Since then, we learned that Dr. Hannah was awarded not one but two competitive postdoctoral fellowships (!!) and decided to stick around San Diego to dive deeper into microbial ecology with @polar_microbes and @schartup_lab
The best part? When Hannah first joined the lab, she swore she disliked #biology enough to work very hard to avoid it. Somewhere along the way, we convinced her that the most exciting #chemistry on #Earth (and maybe the universe) is actually the chemistry done by biology. 😉
Couldn’t be prouder of Dr. Adams and excited for all the discoveries ahead thanks to our favorite fed. agency @nsfgov

Swipe ➡️ for #mercury! Amina had an amazing time visiting @ut_dallas as the 2025 Distinguished Lecturer, hosted by the Chemistry Student Association! "I got to reconnect with my #organicchemistry roots 🧪, talk trace #metals, and chat with faculty working on creative solutions to environmental challenges.

And then… I stumbled onto mercury at the @crowmuseum 🫖"
The second photo shows a 20th century cinnabar-coated teapot (cinnabar is mercuric sulfide). #cinnabar gives this tea pot that beautiful deep red color, but under heat or acidity, it can release its toxic #mercury ... It's a tea pot! What are we coating our teapots with today that, in a century, will have us going 🤦🏽? 😭 @scripps_ocean

We are having a good time over on bsky ��🥳

.pro-gallery-wix-wrapper {display: block !important;} .pro-gallery-wix-wrapper .gallery-item-container {opacity: 1 !important; display: block !important;}

Follow us on Instagram

@schartup_lab

Home: Contact

Contact Us

The Schartup Lab
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Lab 243 Vaughan Hall
8622 Kennel Way La Jolla, CA 92037

aschartup@ucsd.edu

​

Follow us on Instagram

Contact Us