Hunting for Microbial Dark Matter in Canada

When:  Feb 23, 2017 from 16:00 to 17:30 (MT)
Associated with  Calgary

Hunting for Microbial Dark Matter in Canada: The remarkable biodiversity of our most extreme natural environments.  

 

by

Peter Dunfield, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary

 

Thursday, February  2017,

University of Calgary, Biological Sciences Room 211

 

Abstract:

The development of molecular ecology techniques has revealed that the vast majority of the Tree of Life is made up of microbes. However, most of these are extremely difficult to culture and observe in the lab, and so have been dubbed “Microbial Dark Matter”. For the past 10 years, in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Canada, my lab has been cataloguing the biodiversity of the most physicochemically extreme habitats in Canada, including thermal springs in the mountains of BC (with temperatures up to 85°C), brine springs in Wood Buffalo National Park, and sulfur deposits on Ellesmere Island. The biodiversity of these habits is controlled in predictable ways by temperature and osmotic stress. However, a few unique sites have abundant growth of bacteria belonging to Phyla (the most ancient limbs on the Tree of Life) that have rarely or never been detected before. These sites represent unique biodiversity hotspots unlike any other known places on Earth. In collaboration with the Joint Genome Institute, we are now using single-cell genomics and metagenomics to understand what these odd microorganisms do.

 

Bio: Peter Dunfield, currently Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, obtained his PhD in microbiology at McGill University in 1997. He then worked as a research group leader at the for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany, where his group studied the environmental methane cycle. Later he was a senior research scientist at the Institute Geological and Nuclear Sciences in New Zealand, where he developed a new research lab to investigate biotechnological applications of extremophilic bacteria. Throughout his 20 years in academia and he has authored over 85 publications and received numerous awards including an Alberta Innovates-Technology Futures New Faculty Award and a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Visiting Scholar Award.


Location

UofC Biol 311
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, AB T2N1N4

Contact

Kelly Monteleone
+403-478-3833
kelly.monteleone@ucalgary.ca