Accessing the marine microbiome through novel cultivation approaches

Prof. dr Jörg Overmann (DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Braunschweig, Germany) received his PhD from the University of Konstanz. After a postdoc at UBC, Vancouver, and the Habilitation at the ICBM, Oldenburg, he became Professor of Microbiology at the LMU München. Since 2010 he is Director of the Leibniz-Institut DSMZ and Professor of Microbiology at the TU Braunschweig. Prof. Overmann has published over 150 articles, received the Ph.D. award of the VAAM, and was Inaugural Douglas Leigh Lecturer of the Waksman Foundation for Microbiology in 2013. He is member elect of the review panel of the German Science Foundation, and serves in Editorial Boards and several scientific advisory boards.

Microbiomics at global scale: From human gut to TARA oceans

Prof. dr Peer Bork (Structural and Computational Biology, EMBL Heidelberg, Germany) is Senior Group Leader and Joint Head of the Structural and Computational Biology unit at EMBL, a European research organisation where he also serves as strategic head of bioinformatics. In addition, he holds an appointment at the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin. Prof. Bork received his PhD in Biochemistry (1990) and his Habilitation in Theoretical Biophysics (1995). He works in various areas of computational and systems biology with a focus on function prediction, comparative analysis and data integration. In addition to an outstanding academic career, he has also co-founded five successful biotech companies, two of which went public.

Integrated (meta) genomic and synthetic biology approaches for bioactive biodiscovery

Prof. dr Fergal O’Gara  (BIOMERIT Research Centre, School of Microbiology, National University of Ireland, Cork [UCC], Ireland) is Director of the Biomerit Research Programme at UCC. He is also Emeritus Professor of Microbiology at the University and is Distinguished Research Fellow at Biomedical Science at Curtin University and at the Telethon Kids Institute Perth WA Australia. Professor O’Gara’s research interests focus on the genetics and molecular biology of microbe-host interactions in medical and environmental biotechnology including marine biodiscovery.  

Targeting taxonomic blind spots and functional traits via single-cell approaches

Dr Tanja Woyke (DOE Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, CA, USA) joined the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in 2004 after receiving her PhD from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany. Since 2009, she has been heading the Microbial Genomics Program at the JGI and she holds appointments as Adjunct Scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and as Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the University of California, Merced. Her research is focused on metagenomics and single-cell genomics to study ‘microbial dark matter’, and including the development of functionally targeted single-cell approaches.

Ecogenomics of marine microbial communities

Prof. dr Gerard Muyzer (Microbial Systems Ecology, Department of Aquatic Microbiology, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) is Professor in Microbial Systems Biology at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His research interests are diversity and ecophysiology of bacteria that play a role in the sulphur cycle of freshwater, marine and extreme environments. Within his research he is using a systems biology approach including different meta-omics techniques. For more information, see www.muyzer.eu.

Single-cell analysis of microbial activity in benthic marine environments

Dr Anne Dekas (Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, CA, USA) is a geomicrobiologist interested in how microbial life affects the chemistry and climate of our planet today and throughout time. She obtained her PhD in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology in 2013, and her BA in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University in 2004. She joined the Earth System Science Department at Stanford University as Assistant Professor in September 2015.

New approaches for the immobilisation, culture and isolation of marine extremophiles

Prof. Gwenaelle LeBlay (Laboratory of Microbiology of Extreme Environments, University of East Brittany, Brest, France) is a Professor at the University of Brest (UBO), France. During the 16 years she spent in different laboratories in Europe (Switzerland, Germany, France) and Canada, she has acquired strong expertise in microbial physiology and ecology in different ecosystems. She recently directed her research to work on the culture of microorganisms from marine extreme environments. She is currently working on the development of immobilized microbial communities from deep sea ecosystems to study microbial population dynamics during continuous cultures in bioreactors.

A new hypothesis on the nature of microbial "uncultivability" 

Prof. Slava Epstein (Northeastern University, College of Science, Boston, USA) is Professor at the Northeastern University in Boston, whose lab team, for the past 15 years, has been working on one of the most intriguing biological phenomena: why 99% of microbial diversity has gone missing from the lab. The basic and applied potential of this microbial “dark matter” is unprecedented, and so his lab has focused on, developed, and continues to practice innovative approaches to sample and study this pool of unexplored species. These approaches led to the new ideas about why uncultivated species remain uncultivated.