Doctoral Student from Germany Spoke in Microbiology Lecture at IPB
Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Bogor Agricultural University (FMIPA – IPB), especially Division of Microbiology, held “Guest Lecture in Microbiology” on Thursday (2/8) at Reading Room Department of Biology, FMIPA, IPB Dramaga Campus. This event invited speaker, Dirk Berkelmann, doctoral student from Department of Genomic and Applied Microbiology, Goettingen University, Germany. Professor of Department of Biology IPB, Prof. Dr. Anja Meryandini had opportunity to open the event with theme “Metagenomics and Bioinformatics in Microbial Ecology”.
Dr. Rika Indri Astuti as the moderator conveyed that this agenda was held in order to share knowledge and to improve the skill of metagenomics analysis data processing. “This general lecture is organized for sharing information from researcher who had conducted research about microbiology, particularly in microbe community analysis by using metagenomic method, because most of audiences are from Graduate Program of Microbiology. And it is also to improve the skill of using computer program for bioinformatics analysis in revealing microbe diversity,” she said.
In his lecture, Dirk explained that soil with different texture also has different microbe diversity. Harvesting those bacteria can be done in two methods, those are culture dependent approach (includes cultivation, sequencing, taxonomy identification) and culture independent approach (includes DNA isolation, genes marker amplification, and data analysis). Next, conducting bioinformatics analysis can be done by using classic and modern methods. These methods are able to detect up to microbes’ strain through the provided database.
Recently Dirk is conducting research project in Indonesia about microbes community in Jambi tropical rain forest using metagenomic approach. Through this collaboration according to Dr. Rika, IPB will be able to send its students to Gottingen University to conduct the microbes diversity analysis using the
latest methods. “This is definitely making the analysis much more easier, mainly because the usage of sophisticated instruments so the analysis can be done faster and more reliable.”
One of the participants said that he highly appreciated the organizing of this general lecture, because it added more knowledge outside the regular courses schedule and also increased motivation to keep learning and conducting experiments to new things. (qa)
