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B.S. Microbiology 1994, Indiana University M.S. Microbiology 1996, University of Illinois |
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I am currently working on the "funny bug" Methanosarcina barkeri 227 in Dr. Stephen Zinder's laboratory in the Department of Microbiology at Cornell University. I have been trying to devise a genetic approach to the study of nif genes from this organism in vivo. First, I had to devise a scheme to grow these extremely oxygen sensitive microbes on plates. I was able to play around with the environmental conditions in Ball canning jars to get them to grow in colonies reproducibly. Second, the organism had to be transformable with a selectable plasmid. I accomplished this by using a protocol devised by Dr. William Metcalf from the Department of Microbiology at the University of Illinois. I have been able to do this reproducibly, but am still working on the most effective conditions. The next step will be to express the putative promoter (as reported by Chien et al 1992) on the selectable plasmid with a reporter gene behind it. When the usefullness of the promoter has been established, we will then express nif genes and mutants under the control of this putative promoter. |
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