Christa Maria Schleper
Adjunct Professor
Department of Biology
Centre for Geobiology
Title: Adjunct Professor
Phone: +47 55 58 26 65
E-mail: Christa.Schleper@bio.uib.no
Visiting address: Thormøhlensgt. 53 A/B
My work focuses on the characterisation of archaea, a group of organisms comprising the third domain of life besides Bacteria and Eukaryotes. My main research goals are to understand the ecological role of archaea in extreme and moderate habitats on Earth as well as the role of archaea in early evolution and in shaping the eukaryotic cell. I use classical microbiological as well as genomic and metagenomic technologies to characterize both, archaeal model organisms that can be grown in the laboratory and archaea in the environment. More specifically current research concentrates on ammonia oxidizing archaea, which are widespread and among the most abundant microorganisms in oceanic plankton, sediments and soils as well as on the study of horizontal gene transfer and gene regulation in the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus.