300027 PP Extremophilic and thiotrophic Microorganisms (2019S)

This is a two-week practical. In the first week participants will take samples from terrestrial hot springs and marine shallow waters, and will perform initial microscopical and physical analyses of the samples and will set up enrichment cultures for moderate and hyperthermophilic chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms. In the second week, these samples and the enrichment cultures will be analysed for the presence and diversity of specific microorganisms with standardar molecular biological techniques. In particular, we will focus on thermophilic archaea and thiotrophic marine symbiotic bacteria. Students will become familiar with basic molecular and microscopic techniques that are routinely employed in microbial ecology (e.g. DNA preparation from environmental samples, PCR, cloning, sequence analysis, fluorescent microscopy) and will get to know the physiology and growth requirements of some extremophilic and chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms. They will also learn to design experiments and to communicate about experimental setups.