En e-exchange (e-mobility) of MSc student Stella Christou was established between TU Delft and Warsaw University (under current corona circumstances) on the database construction and bioinformatics of xenogenetic elements. On her MSc thesis, Stella is jointly supervised by David Weissbrodt and David Calderon Franco from TU Delft and by Lukasz Dziewit and Premisław Decewicz from Warsaw University.
Stella Christou is 25 years old Greek Cypriot. She studied Biology at the University of Athens, Greece and I specialized there in Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology. After that, She moved to Delft to do her master's degree in "Life Science and Technology", following the "Cell Factory" specialization. Stella decided to do her thesis in the Environmental Biotechnology group under the supervision of David Weissbrodt since she found the current focus of his group truly interesting.
Her thesis title is: "Towards xenogenetic risk assessment: Identifying antimicrobial resistances, mobile genetic elements, synthetic genes and host microorganisms emitted from urban water basins".
In REPARES project, along with the contribution of Lucasz Dziewit and Premisław Decewicz, and the daily supervision of David Calderon Franco, we aim to initially understand and state the current status of genetic and xenogenetic material present in the WWTPs as well as the microorganisms inhabiting those environments and can serve as potential hosts facilitating the spread of such elements. This will be achieved through literature review and molecular biology techniques. In parallel, we are analyzing samples from the different phases and DNA fractions (intracellular/extracellular) of a Nereda® aerobic granular sludge WWTP, using bioinformatics tools. In order to overcome drawbacks/difficulties of existent databases, we put together a data collection in order to be able to develop our own database.
It is a work adjusted to the current health situation and lab restrictions but still promising to underline the potential importance of the role of WWTPs in xenogenetic material spread and proliferation.