The story starts at the beautiful Lake Lugano 
in Southern Switzerland.
It has a history of containing too much nutrients due to human activities, leading to massive algae growth and bad water quality – a process called eutrophication. 
Luckily there are microbes in the lake that remove excessive nitrogen.
That’s why it is important to study the processes in the lake that fight the human effect -and many people already studied Lake Lugano. 
But there are still many open questions.
So how do we find out?
Me and my colleagues went many times to the 284 m deep North Basin of Lake Lugano to take water samples.
I took water to analyse different compounds. 
And I filled water bottles for DNA extraction and incubation experiments. 
And we measured oxygen, temperature, and other parameters with a CTD sonde.
At the end of the sampling days, we take the water samples … 
and bring them to the University of Basel 
where I do all of the lab work, data analysis, and writing.
Amongst others, I filter water to get DNA. 
I grow bacteria by injecting substrates. 
Incubations need to be without oxygen and therefore bubbled with helium. 
I measure isotopes of nitrogen compounds! And many more things.
After all of the lab work, I get a sheer endless amount of data!
I need to organise my data but like my desk, the data analysis is often messy! And can be very complicated. 
There is nothing better when I finally understand my data 😉 
After that, I just need to write everything up.
With my results, which I will post another time, I can answer many of the initial questions. And ask new questions! In the end, I hopefully complete my thesis to get the PhD degree = Happy End 🙂
Colors of science 