Vincent Denef

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Graduate Student

Education:

(2001-present): Ph.D. student at LabMET, Ghent University (Prof. W. Verstraete) on a doctoral fellowship from the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research. Long-term Research Scholar at the Center for Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University (Dr. J. Tiedje).

(2003) Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Advanced Bacterial Genetics Course.
Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA.

(2002) Marine Biological Laboratory. Microbial Diversity Course.
Woods Hole, MA, USA.

(1996-2001): University of Leuven, Belgium (KUL). Graduated with magna cum laude as Bio-Engineer in Environmental Technology (minor: Cell- and Gene Biotechnology) in June 2001.

Research Areas:

Genomics and physiology of metabolism relevant to aerobic polychlorinated biphenyl degradation by Burkholderia sp. novum LB400.

Development of DNA Microarray methodology for diagnostic in-situ microbial detection.

Collaborations:

Burkholderia sp. novum LB400 genome project -- Sequencing is performed by the Production Genomics Facility of the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute and automatically annotated by the Computational Genomics Group of Oak Ridge National Laboratories. A genomic DNA microarray was constructed in collaboration with Xeotron Corporation.

Burkholderia sp. novum LB400 Proteomics -- In collaboration with the Genome BC Microbial Envirogenomics Group of Drs. L. Eltis, W. Mohn and J. Davies at University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada).

Diagnostic Microarrays -- In collaboration with Dr. S. Hashsham (MSU), Dr. Y. Matsumura (Kansai University, Japan), Dr. W. Verstraete (Ghent University, Belgium).

Publications:

Denef, V.J., J. Park, T.V. Tsoi, J.-M. Rouillard, H. Zhang, J.A. Wibbenmeyer, W. Verstraete, E. Gulari, S.A. Hashsham, and J.M. Tiedje. Biphenyl and benzoate metabolism in a genomic context: Outlining genome-wide metabolic networks in Burkholderia xenovorans LB400. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2004 (in press).

Denef, V.J., J. Park, J. L. Rodrigues, T. V. Tsoi, S. A. Hashsham, J. M. Tiedje. Validation of a more sensitive method for using spotted oligonucleotide DNA microarrays for functional genomics studies on bacterial communities. Environ. Microbiol. 2003 Oct; 5(10):933-43.