Prominent North American Scientist Delivers Interesting Seminar on Microbial Communities
18/03/2008Jillian Banfield, Doctor in Planetary and Earth Sciences, gave a special seminar on Microbial Community Genomics, during her visit to the Bioinformatics and Genome Biology Center and in the context of an international cooperation project financed by FONDECYT.
In her lecture at Fundación Ciencia para la Vida’s Enrique Méndez Auditorium, Dr. Banfield explained how microbial communities and their associated viruses interact in acid mine drainage (AMD) sites.
The metagenomic and metaproteomic studies in abandoned AMD sites performed by Dr. Banfield and her group in Berkeley, California, are the most significant advances in understanding the ecology and the dynamics of natural and industrial ecosystems.
The renowned researcher, who has published works in the prestigious “Science” and “Nature” magazines, noted that that Dr. Raquel Quatrini – Junior Researcher at Fundación Ciencia para la Vida – and her group are doing “world class science” and added that they have become leaders in the field of genome application to the study of microorganisms involved in the biolixiviation process.
