Place: 4274 Chamberlin (Refreshments will be served)
Speaker: Jo Handelsman, Bacteriology
Abstract: The soil is the richest environment on Earth. It contains the highest diversity and density of life forms of any habitat, with more than one billion bacterial cells per gram. The chemical diversity is also unparalleled, providing a pharmaceutical cornucopia that has been exploited by humans. For example, most of the antibiotics used in modern medicine are derived from bacteria that reside in soil. The complexity of soil microbial communities makes their analysis challenging and an accurate census thus far impossible. My lab's work is directed toward describing the biological and chemical diversity in soil using diverse techniques. In this talk, I will cover molecular analyses as well as statistical analyses that use great books as a metaphor for soil communities.