Inaugural lectures by Lasse Riemann and Mathias Middelboe

Program

14:00 Welcome by Head of Department Niels Kroer
14:05 Professor Lasse Riemann:
Coupling identity and function in marine bacteria 
14:35 Professor Mathias Middelboe:
Marine virus-bacteria interactions: Nanoscale processes with global scale implications  
15:05 Reception

Professor Lasse Riemann
Coupling identity and function in marine bacteria
The one billion bacteria, which are found in an average liter of seawater, generally process more than half of the carbon fixed by local photosynthesis and mediate most nutrient transformations. They harbor a tremendous taxonomic and functional diversity, and promptly respond to any environmental change. Therefore, the combined gene-pool maintained and expressed by these microbes reflects the contemporary growth conditions, mirrors their cellular metabolisms, and represents a gateway to elucidate their importance in marine waters. We use molecular and microbiological tools to discern bacterial functionality and autecology; recently, with a focus on heterotrophic nitrogen fixing bacteria. These analyses, spanning from cultivation to next-generation sequencing and biogeochemistry, have contributed significantly to our current understanding of these organisms as important players in marine nitrogen cycling.

Professor Mathias Middelboe
Marine virus-bacteria interactions:
Nanoscale processes with global scale implications
Viruses are ubiquitous, abundant, and dynamic components of environmental communities and are found in all the world’s ecosystems from deep-sea sediments to freshwater lakes. There are approximately 107 viruses per milliliter of seawater and 109 viruses per gram of soil or sediment, which makes viruses the most common biological entities on Earth. By infecting and subsequently killing a large fraction of marine bacteria, viruses are key players in the marine ecosystem. Thus, even though they act at the smallest scale of biological activity, viruses have significant influence on biological processes at all levels in the marine environment, from microscale bacterial community dynamics and evolution to global nutrient cycling. The presentation summarizes the present knowledge on the roles of viruses in the marine environment.