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SUMMARY:EESS talk on "Metagenomics-guided discovery of new microbial biotr
 ansformations"
DTSTART:20220503T121500
DTEND:20220503T131500
DTSTAMP:20260916T225605Z
UID:a347189cd8dacc3ba62bb8af26f7caeef367eb3ab80dd72c4983eccc
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Dr Serina Robinson\, Group Leader Tenure Track\, Department of
  Microbiology\, EAWAG\nAbstract:\nOver 350’000 different chemicals and c
 hemical mixtures are documented for human production and use. Many of thes
 e chemicals have negative effects on ecosystems and human health\, driving
  a need for their environmental removal. Microbes are adept at degrading a
 nthropogenic chemicals\, but the vast majority of microbial biotransformat
 ions are characterized from bacteria cultivable in the laboratory. Environ
 mental microbiome surveys using ‘omics techniques reveal we have cultiva
 ted less than 1% of total microbial biodiversity. From the ‘uncultivated
  majority’ we still lack a functional understanding of thousands of prot
 ein families which play as-yet unknown roles in microbial metabolism. In t
 his talk\, I will describe our research on cultivation-independent techniq
 ues to characterize the chemical biotransformation potential of marine and
  aquatic microbiomes. Specifically\, I will cover our recent functional ch
 aracterization of new enzymes involved in bioactive peptide modification b
 y an abundant marine bacterium belonging to the uncultivated phylum\, ‘C
 andidatus Eremiobacterota.’ In addition\, I will describe our new resear
 ch directions on pollutant transformations by uncultivated Planctomycetes.
  As an outlook\, I will explore how metagenome mining and synthetic biolog
 y techniques can be combined to link genotype to metabolic phenotype in en
 vironmental microbiomes.\n\nShort biography:\nSerina L. Robinson started a
 s a tenure track group leader in the Department of Environmental Microbiol
 ogy at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawa
 g) in September 2021 following an ETH Zurich postdoctoral fellowship in th
 e Institute of Microbiology advised by Prof. Dr. Jörn Piel. She obtained 
 her PhD in Microbiology and MSc in Bioinformatics and Computational Biolog
 y from the University of Minnesota\, Minneapolis\, USA (advisor: Larry Wac
 kett). Her current research focuses on the characterization of microbial e
 nzymes from aquatic microbiomes involved in specialized metabolism includi
 ng pollutant biotransformations.
LOCATION:GC B1 10 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==GC%20B1%2010 https://epfl.zo
 om.us/j/66723503475
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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