[1] Her work is focused on how microbes interact with dissolved organic matter and the impact of microbial diversity on the global carbon and sulfur cycles.
[2] By defining the roles of diverse bacteria in the carbon and sulfur cycles, she connects the biogeochemical and organismal approaches in marine science.
[5] Mary Ann Moran received her Bachelor of Arts degree in biology in 1977 at the Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.
As described in her 2015 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper, a large amount of organic matter is released by phytoplankton and then degraded by heterotrophic bacteria in the ocean surface.
[14] One of the goals of Moran's research group is to predict how microbes and dissolved organic matter respond to our changing climate and how those responses, in turn, affect the global carbon cycle.
Moran's group also showed that DHPS was abundant in natural diatom populations and was an actively cycled compound in seawater.
[16] In addition, she has studied the physiology, genetics, and ecology of the Roseobacter clade extensively, firmly establishing their importance in many marine ecosystems.
Moran's research group discovered key genes in Roseobacter and Pelagibacteria that breakdown DMSP into methanethiol instead, a chemical compound that does not enter the atmosphere or increase cloud formation.
[17][18] Basically, Moran's research group made a major discovery that explains connections between the marine microbial food web and cloud formation over the oceans.
[18] "Isolating and discovering a novel, keystone bacterium from the ocean first, and then sequencing its genome enabled this team to find the genes involved in the DMSP cycle," said Matthew Kane, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, which supported the research.