Professor Mitrick Johns
NIU students are helping to annotate the genome of Ammonifex degensii, along with students from 15 other colleges, in a collaboration with the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute. Professor Rick Johns is running this project at NIU. During the spring 2008 semester, five students took part in an experimental "Genomes and Gene Annotation" class. The class involved extensive computer lab work. Students learned about the organization and structure of individual bacterial genes, gene clusters and operons, and the structure of biochemical pathways. Much of this learning was hands-on: each student learned about and annotated several pathways and genes. These annotations will become part of the official GenBank submission for Ammonifex, available to all scientists worldwide.
Professor Johns reported on the NIU student results at a meeting in Walnut Creek, California, in June, and the results will also be published in the scientific literature.
Ammonifex is a newly discovered bacterium that grows in hot springs in Indonesia. It is a Gram-positive organism, related to Bacillus megaterium, Professor Pat Vary's favorite bacterium. Ammonifex uses carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and nitrate as food and energy sources, using poorly-known biochemical pathways that may eventually be used in industrial-scale hydrogen production.
Next year we will run this class again, using a new organism. We will be expanding the collaboration to include direct student contact between colleges, in a Facebook-like format. We also hope to begin lab work on this new bacterium.