DATE: Friday, November 30, 2018 TIME: 2:30 pm (refreshments at 2:15 pm) PLACE: ENR building, room 223 14 College Farm Road, New Brunswick, NJ
Jean Huang
Olin College
Marine and Freshwater Bacterial Community Enrichments that Degrade Cellulose and Fix Nitrogen: It.s Not Who You Are, But What You Do
Cellulose is the most abundant polymer in nature, but it is nitrogen poor. Microbes that degrade cellulose in the environment must therefore obtain a source of fixed nitrogen for growth, and cellulose degradation and nitrogen fixation are energetically demanding processes. We have enriched a series of phototrophic communities from marine and freshwater environments that carry out cellulose degradation and nitrogen fixation with an obligate phototrophic partner. Genomic analysis indicates that marine and freshwater community enrichments have similar compositions of endoglucanases for cellulose degradation that are expressed by a diversity of microbial members.