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Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer
Technopôle Brest-Iroise
29280 PLOUZANE
France.

The UBO group have been working for 10 years on extremophiles, mostly thermophiles, from deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and also from oil fields. This has allowed the isolation of several hundreds of organisms and the description of novel species belonging to both the Bacteria and the Archaea domains. These novel species are autotrophs, heterotrophs, mostly anaerobes. More recently, a novel strain was isolated after enrichment under high pressure and high temperature, described as a novel species Thermococcus barophilus.

The UBO group have considerable experience of working at sea and participation and/or organization of several oceanographic cruises. They also offer the possibility to utilise UBO lab equipment overseas onboard the research ship. The group have organised the oceanographic cruise project AMISTAD (Advanced Microbial Studies on Thermophiles: Adaptations and Diversity), coordinated a MAST programme and co-ordinator (scientific, administrative and financial) of the European program (INTAS) "Microbial Ecology of Siberian High Temperature Petroleum Reservoirs".

More information can be found here.