Microbial evolution

To do this, we employ a variety of approaches, including cultivation-independent methods (e.g. metagenomics, comparative genomics, phylogenomics), but also novel cultivation-dependent methods (e.g. high-throughput cultivation and ecophysiology techniques).

Tree of Life

We are interested in relatively understudied branches in the Tree of Life, such as various archaeal lineages (e.g. Asgard and TACK archaea)and eukaryotic microorganisms ('protists'), but we also focus on various bacterial lineages (such as Alphaproteobacteria and Chlamydiae). Furthermore, we study how various microorganisms interact in microbial communities via symbiotic interactions. Of particular interest is an ancient symbiosis, between an ancient Asgard archaeon and proteobacterium, that gave rise to the first eukaryotic cell in a process referred to as ‘eukaryogenesis’.