Ammonia oxidizing Archaea: Testing genomic predictions on a pure culture

Ammonia oxidizing Archaea are considered one of the most abundant groups of microorganisms on Earth. Since their initial discovery not even 8 years ago many metagenomic studies have been performed to characterize these organisms. However, only two pure cultures are available that allow to test the physiological and cellular features of ammonia oxidizing archaea predicted by genomics. Here I contrast genomic and metagenomic analyses with physiological tests on the pure culture of Nitrososphaera viennensis, as a case study for evaluating culture-independent predictions made in the genomic era of microbiology.
Professor Dr. Christa Schleper has graduated at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry in Munich-Martinsried in 1993. As a postdoc with Ed Delong in Sta. Barbara (USA) she started to work on metagenomics in 1995, even before high throughput sequencing was available. She was a professor in Bergen Norway before she accepted a Professorship at the University of Vienna in 2007. She is a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and an elected member of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Her research interests are the study of the molecular biology, ecology and evolution of hyperthermophilic and moderate Archaea as well as the use of omics technologies for environmental studies.
Moderation: Professor Dr. Katharina Riedel