Monday, January 28th, 2008
11 AM
Bldg. 38A, B2 Library

TITLE: Microbial Biodiversity: New Alternatives for Biotechnology

SPEAKER:
Gerardo Toledo, PhD
Director, Microbiology,
Synthetic Genomics Inc.

ABSTRACT:
The greatest extent of life on the biosphere is represented by microorganisms, primarily from the Domains Archaea and Bacteria 
colonizing any biotope where life is present. Many of these prokaryotes exhibit metabolisms adapted to function under extreme 
conditions such as high or low pH, temperature and redox potential among others. Most of the microbial species in nature remain
 uncultured and detected only by their gene sequences in either ribosomal DNA libraries or metagenomic datasets. To bridge 
the gap between the cultivated and in situ microbial diversity novel techniques have been developed recently to bring into 
culture some of these so far uncultured microbes. The ability to cultivate in vitro some of these uncultured microorganisms 
will provide valuable biological models to test hypotheses related to their physiological potential and ecological niches.  
Also, their genomes can readily be sequenced and serve as scaffolds to assemble metagenomic data from the same environments. 
Finally, these novel cultivated species can provide valuable sources for the development of commercial products such as novel
 antibiotics or industrial enzymes. The latter can play an important role in the production of new generations of fuels.

Please let me know if you would like to meet with the speaker.