Identification of active prophages
This project was my initial spark for my interest in phage biology. I realised it during my Doctoral Thesis and managed to establish a method to discriminate between harmless prophage remnants and still viable and intact prophages residing in a prokaryotic genome. That is of particular importance for evaluating industrial relevant Bacillus strains for their fermenter-based production stability.
Status: This project is not being further developed. However, we are happy to contribute our knowledge to new related projects in the context of academic or industrial collaborations.
Associated publications
Hertel R, Rodríguez DP, Hollensteiner J, Dietrich S, Leimbach A Hoppert M, Liesegang H, Volland S (2015) Genome-based identification of active prophage regions by Next Generation Sequencing in Bacillus licheniformis DSM13. PLoS One 10:e0120759 (DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0120759 )