Environmental Microbiome

In general, microorganisms rarely exist independently in ecosystems, and they form microbial communities that are closely interrelated with microorganisms, other organisms, or their surroundings, such as wastewater treatment and water purification systems, pathogenic microorganisms, antibiotic resistance, pollution recovery, and metal corrosion. Since the characteristics of microorganisms in community are completely different from those of individuals, a comprehensive study is needed on topics such as the temporal and spatial dynamic characteristics of various microorganisms that make up the community, microbial phenotypes and activity changes, and interrelationships among environmental microbiome.

With the development of high throughput sequencing techniques, it has become possible to easily obtain large-capacity sequences, and the bioinformatics analysis process of analyzing data and interpreting it as meaningful information has become more important. Advances in molecular biotechnology, especially omics techniques such as metagenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, have opened new strategies and opportunities to shed light on microbial roles in environmental ecosystems.

The EIBL group has been conducting BT-ET-IT convergence research using these omics methods to understand the diverse microbial communities and ecological functions and role, metabolism in various environmental samples (air environment, soil/groundwater environment, wastewater, purified water, lake/water environment, marine/ocean environment, etc.).