Rolf Bernander

Department of Molecular Evolution, Uppsala University. Home Page

Research: The archaea cell cycle

The archaea cell cycle group is headed by professor Rolf Bernander at the department of Molecular Evolution at the Evolutionary Biology Center. The work is focused on regulatory and mechanistic aspects of chromosome replication, genome segregation and cell division in hyperthermophilic organisms from the Archaea domain of life.

The group has developed whole-genome spotted DNA microarrays for functional genomics studies of two Sulfolobus species, which grow optimally at 80°C and pH 3. The arrays are used for a wide range of expression analyses, as well as for comparative genomics hybridizations. In particular, the arrays have been used to study in vivo chromosome replication patterns, which has resulted in the identification of the first instance of multiple chromosome replication origins in prokaryotic organisms.

The work also concerns the organization of the cell cycle in different archaea, using a unique flow cytometry instrumentation to determine the relative lengths of the cell cycle periods. The technique has also been used to measure cell size and DNA content in different growth phases, to study the effects of drug treatments, to investigate conditional-lethal mutants, as well as for a variety of other studies.

The group has recently received "strong research environment" funding within a project entitled Microbiomics, which is an interdisciplinary network involving microbiologists, environmental scientists, organic chemists and materials science researchers from Uppsala University and the Swedish Agricultural University. The work is focused on development of new research tools to measure microbial abundance and activity in natural communities, of which archaea are ubiquitous but little understood members.

Five Selected Publications

Hjort, K., and Bernander, R. (2001). Cell cycle regulation in the hyperthermophilic crenarchaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius. Mol. Microbiol. 40: 225-234.

Robinson, N. P., Dionne, I., Lundgren, M., Marsh, V. L., Bernander, R., and Bell, S. D. (2004). Identification of two origins of replication in the single chromosome of the archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus. Cell 116: 25-38.

Lundgren, M., Andersson, A., Chen, L., Nilsson, P. and Bernander, R. (2004). Three replication origins in Sulfolobus species: synchronous initiation of chromosome replication and asynchronous termination. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101: 7046-7051.

Andersson, A., Bernander, R., and Nilsson, P. (2005). Dual-genome primer design for construction of DNA microarrays. Bioinformatics 21: 325-332.

Lundgren, L., and Bernander, R. (2005). Archaeal cell cycle progress. Curr. Opin. Microbiol. 8: 662-668.