Prokaryotic microorganisms are the oldest, most abundant, and particularly most diverse forms of life on earth and dominate many functions of the biosphere, including the productivity of the oceans and the global cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and other elements. Prokaryotes also harbor an enormous potential for novel natural product discovery, bioremediation and bioenergy production. However, it is estimated that over 99% of all microbial species from environmental microcosms remain uncultured, attempts to grow them under laboratory conditions fail or they grow too slowly to obtain sufficient biomass for analysis. Genome sequencing for the vast majority of Prokaryotes has therefore been inaccessible, obscuring the knowledge of microbial diversity, metabolic potentials and evolutionary histories.

Our aim is to obtain genomes from new bacterial and archaeal taxa with no sequenced representatives and providing direct link information between cell’s phylogenetic and metabolic markers by matching phylogeny and function. We would like to unravel novel metabolisms, ecophysiology and mechanisms of energy conservation among uncultured microorganisms, which were intractable before. In addition, we are investigating minimal genome requirements and syntrophic interactions as well as probing genetic and phenotypic heterogeneity among cells, cell-to-cell variations, horizontal gene transfer and evolutionary pressure.

We have already many rare and unique samples stored that will enable us to study fundamental aspects of microbial biology, which have so far escaped traditional approaches and we will collect many more on field trips.