About us
The research team is led by Dr Susan Turner, and includes Postdoctoral Research Fellows, Research Technicians, PhD students and an Administrative Assistant.
Although currently focused on wastewater treatment, our research capabilities and expertise extends to other microbial processes in industrial and natural settings.
Our main research program is funded by the New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology under contract UOAX0304.
Research Leader
Dr Susan Turner
Susan holds a BSc in Microbiology from Massey University and a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Auckland. Prior to taking up an academic position, she trained and worked in the environmental health field as a Health Protection Officer for the former Dept of Health then as a Water Quality Scientist for the Auckland Regional Council. Her research expertise includes water quality microbiology, molecular microbial ecology, and microbial genomics. Research activities include microbial interactions in activated sludge, biofilms in New Zealand's geothermal systems, and symbioses of herbivorous fishes. She is the former President of the New Zealand Microbiological Society and is one of the founding scientists of ZyGEM Corp.
Research Fellows
Dr Clark Ehlers
Clark holds a PhD in Environmental Biotechnology from Rhodes University in South Africa during which a pilot-scale wastewater treatment process was developed for a waste oil refinery. Thereafter, Clark pursued a post-doctoral position at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria, focussing on contaminated soil management. His present work as post-doctoral fellow in the Microbial Ecology & Genomics Lab focuses on the bioprocessing component within the Bacterial eco-genomics project including operation of bioreactors, investigation of the factors that promote aggregation in activated sludge and the capacity of Acidovorax temperans to denitrify under aerobic conditions and accumulate poly-B-hydroxybutyrate.
Dr Svetlana Boycheva
Svetlana holds a PhD in Molecular Biology which she completed at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Her current research focuses on understanding which genes are involved in the social life of Acidovorax temperans, their expression levels and how they are regulated in response to different environmental signals. She uses a site directed gene knockout technology, reporter gene fusions, gene tagging and promoter-trapping techniques. Her other research interests are synthetic genomes and bioinformatics.
Dr Sinead Leahy
Sinead has a strong research interest in the implementation and application of bioinformatics methodologies and microscopy to explore and exploit the genomic sequences of bacterial strains. She obtained her BSc in Microbiology followed by a PhD in Bioinformatics in 2005 from the National University of Ireland, Cork. Her work with Acidovorax focuses on the genome sequencing and analysis of a numerically and ecologically significant strain of Acidovorax isolated from an activated sludge community.
Research Technicians
Kristi Biswas
Kristi completed her BSc (Honours) from University of Dundee (Scotland) in 2004 and MSc from University of Otago (New Zealand) in 2006, and now works on microbial ecology aspects of the project as a research technician. Monthly samples of activated sludge are collected from 3 different waste water treatment plants in New Zealand, and analysed through 16S rRNA clone libraries. The results are able to give us a better understanding of the relationships between microbial community dynamics, environmental parameters and sludge settling performance.
Anna Lau
Anna completed her BSc and MSc at the University of Auckland, during which her part time job in a food microbiology laboratory has stimulated her interest in the microbiology field. She now works in the Microbial Ecology & Genomics Lab as a teaching and research technician, assisting in the delivery of undergraduate microbiology labs. Her research project focuses on the detection of secondary metabolites in activated sludge.
PhD students
Björn Heijstra
Björn is interested in the mechanisms underlying bacterial attachment. He is studying the soluble fraction of extra-cellular polymers produced by Acidovorax temperans and their influence in the attachment to surfaces. To identify the polymers present on the outer surface of the bacterial cell, he uses a variety of techniques including: Chromatography, Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), Transmission and Scanning Electron Microscopy and Fluorescent Microscopy. Assays on generated mutants are used to determine the specific function of each individual polymer.
Caroline Brown
Caroline is investigating the ecology and abundance of Acidovorax temporans and closely related species in activated sludge. Part of this work has included the development of a culture collection comprising more than 150 bacteria isolated from activated sludge. This diverse collection of isolates is being used to investigate the interactions between A. temperans and other organisms under laboratory conditions. Fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) and real-time PCR are being utilised to determine the abundance and spatial organisation of A. temperans and other members of the family Comamonadaceae in activated sludge from New Zealand wastewater treatment plants.
Ee Ming (Kelvin) Lau
Kelvin is developing a gene expression microarray platform for use with Acidovorax. Microarray technology enables the interrogation of all expressed transcripts in a cell simultaneously. The development of a gene expression microarray platform for Acidovorax temperans involves the optimisation of experimental protocols as well as the design of microarray probes and validation protocols by Real Time PCR. The full genome array has now been constructed and is being applied in experiments to investigate crucial processes involved in biofilm formation.