What is growing in the water bath? Master student wanted to find out!

Archaea is the least studied of the three domains of life. Known to live in the most extreme habitats they are nevertheless common in all parts of the biosphere. Varied, understudied and immune to most forms of antibiotics they pose unique challenges to study, and that is where you enter the picture.

The Archaea lab at the Limnology department studies population structure of archaea in their natural habitat, and we want to correlate those studies with the properties of cells in cultivation.

In this project you will cultivate two strains of archaea - a halophile that is adapted to extreme levels of salt, and a thaumarchaeon that is adapted to the harsh life in the oxygen limited ocean. You will start the cultivations, explore different techniques to monitor and manipulate growth and characterize growth parameters.

You will be in the startup phase of the project, so your ability to learn, adapt and communicate methods is very important. At the end of the project you will not only report your result - you will teach the rest of the lab how to do it.

For contact and further information, please email Erik.Pelve@ebc.uu.se