Sarah Marie Stoppel has completed her Master's degree in Microbiology

The anaerobic thermophile, Kosmotoga olearia, is a deep-branching bacterium belonging to the ancient bacterial lineage named Thermotogae. This microorganism was previously isolated from hot water produced from a deep North Sea oil reservoir, and is believed to represent an indigenous member of a deep bacterial biosphere. Sarah performed transcriptomics analysis of cells grown with variuos carbon and energy sources in order to reveal regulatory metabolic networks. A huge ability for differential expression of genes was disclosed. Expression of a central regulatory gene as well as trials to establish a transformation protocol for this extremophilic bacterium was also performed.