Genomes

'The Genome Revolution is only just beginning'

On our part, a first ‘genome revolution’ (in 2006) has been the sequencing of three bacterial strains that constitute our laboratory model community for xenobiotic LAS-surfactant biodegradation, as was kindly established by the Microbial Genomes Program of the U.S. Department of Energy - Joint Genome Institute (DoE-JGI).

Then, we are involved with metagenomes of the picoplankton/bacterioplankton community in oligotrophic pre-alpine lake Bodensee (Lake Constance), as was kindly established by the J.C. Venter Institute as part of J. Robert Beyster and Life Technologies Foundation 2009-2010 Research Voyage of the Sorcerer II Expedition.

Nowadays, we routinely genome-sequence our novel bacterial isolates obtained from enrichment cultures, for example, as model organisms for environmental biodegradation processes, involving isolates of Pseudomonas putida, Desulfococcus biacutus, Bacillus sp., Desulfovibrio sp., and others (work in progress).

Furthermore, we explore bacterial communities and their dynamics directly in their environments, by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing (work in progress)