Volunteer: Maria Bonatelli
Maria is a Biologist from Brazil and she did her Master and PhD degrees at University of São Paulo/ Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (Usp/Esalq). Throughout her academical training she have been working on understanding how microorganisms interact with the world – and among themselves, in different contexts. She is currently a postdoc fellow in Maria Carolina Quecine-Verdi’s lab at Usp/Esalq, Brazil. Her research focus on plant-microbe interaction to improve agricultural practices.
Maria is also very passionate about science communication. She is a scientific journalism specialist from University of Campinas, Brazil. She collaborated with different scicomm projects – from blogs to podcast – and currently she is a member of DivulgaMicro, a project that focus on empowering scientists in scicomm skills.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marial-bonatelli/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GX8hiZIAAAAJ&hl=pt-BR
More information about DivulgaMicro: Oliveira et al. 2019 (doi: 10.1128/jmbe.v20i1.1616) or http://divulgamicro.com.br/en/index.html
Anaerobic Biological Dehalogenation
FEMS Microbiology Ecology is proud to present this latest thematic issue on Anaerobic Biological Dehalogenation. Knowledge on anaerobic microbial dehalogenation has advanced significantly since its first discovery. Understanding of the biochemistry, physiology and ecology of organohalide-respiring bacteria (OHRB) has allowed development of bioremediation technologies for clean-up of contaminated sites. At the same time, a fundamental understanding of the processes, enzymes and organisms involved has allowed to discover new exciting features in biochemistry and microbiology. OHRB are either members of novel bacterial genera or already known ones with other metabolic features indicating the importance of horizontal gene transfer in this anaerobic respiration process. Reductive dehalogenases, thus far discovered, are all corrinoid-containing enzymes revealing unexpected biochemical features of this cofactor normally known to be involved in alkyl-transfer reactions. This special thematic issue shows nicely that there remains still a lot to be discovered regarding anaerobic biological dehalogenation.
