This service can deliver identified cultures of pure marine bacteria from any type of marine sample. The service makes use of cultivation and isolation of bacteria, characterization by protein mass spectrometry and identification using gene and genome sequence analysis.
The Laboratory of Microbiology is in the Dept. Biochemistry and Microbiology at the Faculty of Sciences of Ghent University. The LM-UGent team studies diversity, evolution, taxonomy, ecology and biochemistry of bacteria, including marine bacteria. Other research topics in environmental, plant, medical and food microbiology.
The team have developed a high throughput experimental pipeline for isolation of bacteria, dereplication and identification by MALDI TOF mass spectrometry and sequence analysis
The Laboratory of Microbiology hosts the public BCCM/LMG Bacteria Collection, which maintains over 25.000 strains, representing some 700 genera and 4.500 species. It includes over 600 marine strains.
In addition the Laboratory holds a large collection of research strains from diverse origin, including some 3000 marine bacterial strains.
Recent and ongoing marine research projects include studies of bacteria in intertidal sediments of the Scheldt estuary and their role in the nitrogen cycle, bacteria associated microalgae in industrial photobioreactors and bacteria associated with green seaweeds. Techniques used include isolation and characterization of bacteria, MALDI TOF mass spectrometry, whole genome sequence analysis, bacterial community analysis by sequence analysis of the community DNA (metagenomics).
