Transcript Document

Microbial Ecology
138023
Oded Beja
•Introduction
•Syllabus presentation
•What is microbial diversity?
A two-credit course with one hour of lecture and one hour of
discussion each week.
The course focuses on the microbial diversity of different environments.
The objectives are:
(1) to develop an understanding of the morphological, ecological,
biochemical and evolutionary diversity of the microbial world;
(2) to learn how microbes have evolved to survive under ‘extreme’
conditions;
and
(3) to learn the molecular biology and genomics methods by which this
genetic diversity can be analyzed.
What is Microbial Diversity?
Methods in microbial ecology.
Phylogeny and evolution
Fundamental similarities of all living organisms
Paper presentation:Extremes of life
Phylogenetics and Trees of Life
Paper presentation :Lateral gene transfer
Microbial genomics
Paper presentation:What can we learn from genome sequences?
Paper presentation:Complete Genomes
Environmental Molecular Microbiology
Overview of marine microbial ecology
Molecular Methods to assess microbial diversity
Paper discussion:marine microbial diversity
Oligotrophy and VBNC
Paper discussion:Bacterial Rhodopsin and phototrophy
Ecology of Extreme Environments
Extremophiles and the Archaea:habitats and diversity
Paper presentation:Yellowstone National Park
Paper presentation:Vent communities
Hyperthermophiles: phylogeny,morphology
and physiology
Genome integrity in hyperthermophiles
Paper presentation:DNA Repair
The flow of genetic information in hyperthermophilic Archaea
Paper presentation :Protein thermostability
Paper presentation:regulation
Acidophiles:Sulfolobus and viruses
Paper presentation:hyperthermophiles genetics
Halophiles
Halophiles habitats and diversity
Halophiles physiology,biochemistry and genetics
Paper presentation:Halophiles
Marine Archaea
Paper presentation:Cold Archaea
Psychrophiles
Biology of psychrophiles
Paper presentation:Microorganisms of Antarctica
Methanogens
Methanogenic Archaea and consortia
Physiology of methanogenesis Paper presentation:Methanogens
Microbial photosynthesis and Novell photothrophs
Paper presentation: aerobic anoxygenic phototrophs
Novell Eukaryotes
Paper presentation: unsuspected eukaryotic diversity
Exobiology
Paper presentation: Magnetofossils from ancient Mars
14/10/13 Introduction
21/10/13 Phylogeny and evolution
Woese 2000 PNAS 97:8392-8396
Dunning Hotopp et al. 2011 Trends Genet.
27:157-163
28/10/13 Microbial genomics
4/11/13
Environmental Molecular Microbiology
11/11/13 Ecology of Extreme Environments
18/11/13 Hyperthermophiles: phylogeny, morphology and physiology
25/11/13 Marine Archaea
9/12/13
Halophiles
16/12/13 Psychrophiles
23/12/13 Microbial photosynthesis and Novell photothrophs
30/12/13 Novell Eukaryotes & New cultivation methods
6/1/14
Exobiology
Microbial Diversity
Morphological diversity
-cell shapes: rods, cocci, spirals, filaments,
amorphous, pleomorphic, star-shaped, lumpy cocci, squares….
-cell organization: multicellular from pairs and
tetrads to filaments, sheets, rosettes, microbial mats,…
-cells size: average 1 to 5 microns
range 0.1 to 660 microns
(Thiomargarita namibiensis , giant sulfur bacteruim in
Namibian sediments)
Metabolic diversity
•Phototrophs: energy is obtained from light
•heterotrophs:carbon is obtained from organic compounds
(halophilic Archaea and others)
•autotrophs: carbon is obtained by fixing CO2 (most
cyanobacteria, photosynthetic bacteria)
•Chemotrophs:energy is obtained from chemicals
•lithotrophs:inorganic chemicals (sulfur, iron, hydrogen)
-autotrophs: carbon is obtained by fixing CO2
(sulfur-reducing Archaea, methanogens)
-heterotrophs: carbon is obtained from organic
compounds (sulfur-reducing Archaea)
•organotrophs and heterotrophs: carbon and energy are
obtained from organic chemicals (heterotrophs, E.coli,
pathogens)
Ecological diversity
-salinity:from fresh water to marine and hypersaline
environments (Dead sea and the Great Salt Lake, halophiles)
-temperature: from –12 to 113oC (Pyrolobus) and beyond (121oC)
-pH: from 0 (Thiobacillus thiooxidans) to 13 (Plectonema
nostocorum) pH 0 is 1M HCl
-redox potential: from –450mV (methanogens)to +
850mV (iron bacteria)
-hydrostatic pressure: from 1 to 1400 atm (barophiles)
Methods in microbial ecology
Boetius et al. 2000
Orphan et al. 2001
Nanoarchaeum
Boetius et al. 2000
Orphan et al. 2001
Paper presentation for next week:
Interpreting the universal
phylogenetic tree
Woese C.R. (2000) PNAS 97:8392-8396