 |
The major research interest is to explore and to exploit the enormous and largely untapped physiological, metabolic, and genetic diversity of environmental microorganisms by culture-independent metagenomic and metatranscriptomic approaches. This comprises the development of methods for direct isolation of high-quality nucleic acids from various habitats such as water samples, soil, marine sediments, freshwater sediments, ice, and volcanic regions and the construction of small-insert and large-insert metagenomic libraries from isolated DNA. To recover novel genes and gene products from environmental samples the libraries are screened by function-driven or sequence-based approaches. This work has led, i.e., to the successful identification and characterization of novel proteases, oxidoreductases, B12-dependent dehydratases, lipases, and DNA polymerases from metagenomes.
To gain insights into the genomes of the uncultivated microorganisms and to deduce the metabolic potential and to determine key functions of the microbial community present in the studied environments direct sequencing, annotation of metagenomic DNA and cDNA (generated from mRNA), and comparative genomics are carried out. The sequencing data are also used to determine the phylogenetic origin of the sequenced DNA fragments. In addition, the phylogenetic distribution of the microorganisms in the environmental sample is analyzed by classical analysis of the 16S rRNA genes. In addition to metagenomes and metranscriptomes, sequencing and analysis of genomes derived from individual microorganisms is also performed.
|
|
Third party funded projects:
|
GenoMik-Transfer initiative supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF):
Centralized Management
Technology Platform: DNA Sequencing, Annotation, Bioinformatics, Transcriptomics
 more information
|
|
GenoMik-Plus initiative supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF):
Technology Platform: DNA Sequencing, Annotation, Bioinformatics, Transcriptomics
more information |
|
BiotechGenoMik Network Göttingen supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF):
MetaGenoMik: Mining Microbial Genomic Diversity for Novel Enzymes and Bioactive Compounds
more information |
|
Collaborative Project supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, Lower-Saxony:
Comparative functional genome analysis of representative members of the Roseobacter clade
more information |
|
Transregio Sonderforschungsbereich (TRR51) supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
Ecology, Physiology and Molecular Biology of the Roseobacter clade: Towards a Systems Biology Understanding of a Globally Important Clade of Marine Bacteria
more information |
|
Research Unit 571 (DFG-FOR 571): Geobiology of organo- and biofilms: Coupling of the geosphere and the biosphere by microbial processes
Subproject: Microbial control of mineralization processes in non-marine biofilms (DA 374/5-2)
more information |
|
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DA 374/4-1):
Assessment of the functional diversity of soil microbial communities in the German Biodiversity Exploratories by metagenomics
more information |
|
1B-CLUSTER OF EXCELLENCE
“FUNCTIONAL BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH” funded by the State of Lower Saxony (Ministry of Science and Culture):
Assessment of the functional diversity of soil microorganisms by metagenomics
more information |
|
Graduiertenkolleg 1086 “Die Bedeutung der Biodiversität für Stoffkreisläufe und
Biotische Interaktionen in Temperaten Laubwäldern” funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft:
Teilprojekt: Phylogenetische und funktionale Diversität der Bodenbakteriengemeinschaft in Laubwäldern unterschiedlicher Baumartendiversität
more information |
|
