Together with the Technical University of Munich and Genoscope, France, the genome project of the anammox bacterium "Candidatus Kuenenia stuttgartiensis" has been initiated. Since this bacterium is not available in pure culture, the project makes use of the methods for the rapidly developing field of environmental genomics. The approach consists of the generation of a BAC (bacterial arteficial chromosome) library from a 15 l enrichment culture of the anammox bacterium (completed), followed by the screening of this library for inserts that contain the 16S/23S ribosomal RNA operon (underway), and the sequencing of the BAC clones that contain this operon.
In a separate project, the department is working on the functional genomics of Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum (genome available, and Nitrosomonas europaea, see our links section. Currently, RNA expression arrays for this Archaeon are being produced.
