Who we are

Culture Collection of Extremophiles is maintained by the Department of Microbiology, the youngest and the smallest of the departments of the Institute of Biology and Ecology at the Faculty of Sciences of Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice (Slovakia). 

The department offers several microbiology related courses in education (e.g., Molecular Biology, General Microbiology and Virology, Gene Manipulations, Bioinformatics, Applied Microbiology, Environmental Microbiology) as parts of B.Sc., M.Sc. and PhD programs as well as graduation projects designed to provide a strong grounding and hands-on experience in microbial research. To increase the learning process, students also have the opportunity to visit health-care and molecular biology laboratories, as well as the industrial and food companies.

Research interests 

The department was founded in 2015 and since the beginning its research interests have focused on fundamental and applied environmental microbiology. 

Research in this area covers two main topics – genetic ecology and biology of extremophilic bacteria. To provide more insights into molecular biology, ecology, biodiversity, taxonomy and various aspects of microbial biology, we use a combination of traditional cultivation-based microbiological methods and modern molecular approaches including genomics, metagenomics, and proteomics.

In genetic ecology we are studying the mechanisms of the horizontal gene transfer in natural, non-clinical environments, especially the relationships between dissemination of antibiotic resistance in bacteria and heavy metal pollution. In Slovakia, having a long history of mining activities, contamination by heavy metals poses a serious risk to human health and the environment in some areas. Consequently, high levels of antibiotic resistance are observed in bacteria from non-clinical environments. Molecular analyses indicate that due to co-resistance and cross-resistance heavy metals contribute to the spread of antibiotic resistance.

Another focus of the laboratory involves biology of extremophiles - bacteria inhabiting natural and man-made environments, such as industrially heavy metals polluted areas, high altitude environments, storage pools for spent fuel from nuclear reactors, hypersaline lakes, salt brines, mineral and thermal springs etc. We are looking into their biodiversity, taxonomy, genetics, genomics, resistance to extreme environmental factors (pH, salt content, radiation, toxic metals, low and High temperatures etc.) and their potential biotechnological properties. 

Over the last years, many extremophilic and extremotolerant bacteria from various extreme environments have been collected and characterized by our research group and this collection is constantly growing.