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Hurst a kol. Manual of Environmental Microbiology. 2nd edition, 2002, ASM Press, Washington DC

lectures

Basic knowledge of biology, inorganic and organic chemistry

1. Introduction to the basic terms in environmental microbiology and environmental ecology.

2. Major biological cycling of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur catalyzed by microorganisms.

3. Diversity of microorganisms that catabolize organic compounds. Microbial genera known to degrade organic compounds.

4. Importance of microbial diversity. Evolution of biodegradative/biocatalytic pathways.

5. Methodology – biochemical, molecular approaches of microbial development, growth and metabolic properties.

6. Metabolic logic and pathway maps. Catabolic pathways of myriad compounds funnel into a limited set of key intermediates (degradation pathways of polyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, nitroaromatic compounds, substituted aliphatic hydrocarbons, accumulation of heavy metals etc).

7. Issues in aquatic and soil microbiology and ecology, directed to biodegradation of harmful pollutants.

8. Metagenomics.

9. Methods used for isolation of microbes, detection and quantification of their activities. Predicting microbial biocatalysis and biodegradation.

10. Molecular biology techniques of biodiversity and microbial community analysis (PCR, TGGE, RFLP).

11. Basic knowledge of plant metabolism of xenobiotics, similarities and differences with microbes.

12. Action of individual species, activities of the communities, interactions between consortia of microorganisms, microorganisms and plants in real contaminated environments.

13. Possibilities to improve degradation processes: construction of genetically modified organisms with enhanced degradative abilities (microbes and plants), enhance bioavailability of the xenobiotics and interactions of indigenous organisms.

14. Test.