FEMS Microbiology Ecology Poster Prize Winner: Guiping Lui
We send our congratulations to Guiping Lui, who won one of the Poster Prizes at Dehalocon 2021, sponsored by FEMS Microbiology Ecology.
The Third International Conference on Anaerobic Biological Dehalogenation (Dehalocon 2021) was held in Italy between 27-30 September 2021.
Read our interview with Guiping about his research below:
What is your current position?
I am currently a PhD student at the Nanjing Agricultural University in China.”
Could you describe the research your poster covered?
In this study, we obtained an enrichment culture capable of reductively dehalogenating TBBPA to bisphenol A. The reductive dehalogenation of TBBPA was companied by the growth of the organohalide-respiring strain Dehalobacter spp. as revealed by quantitative PCR. The 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing data also demonstrated the relative abundance of Dehalobacter increased from 0.24% to 11% during dehalogenation of TBBPA. Interestingly, the microbial dehalogenation of TBBPA halted in the absence of solid humin and was retrieved once the solid humin was supplemented. We hypothesize that the solid humin acts as the electron shuttle during the microbial dehalogenation. A metagenomic sequencing was conducted and a near complete (96.88 %) draft genome of Dehalobacter was successfully obtained. The genome draft harbored 34 putative reductive dehalogenase genes (rdhA), of which 18 rdhA are clustered with rdhB. The phylogenetic alignments of reductive dehalogenases (RdhA) encoded in this genome showed a relatively low identity with all previously identified RdhA.”
What do you hope to focus your research on in the future?
Following studies are being conducted to illustrate the role of humin in the microbial dehalogenation of TBBPA and to functionally characterize the RdhA catalyzing the reductive dehalogenation of TBBPA.”
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