Open to: Norwich Research Park

Biography: Aldert Zomer focuses on analysis of bacterial (meta-)genomes for comparative genomics, molecular epidemiology and linking bacterial genotype to phenotype. Furthermore he is staff member of the WHO-Collaborating Center for Campylobacter, WHO consultant on genomics for antimicrobial resistance detection and bioinformatics consultant for Janssen Pharmaceuticals on bacterial vaccine development.

Aldert Zomer obtained a PhD from University of Groningen in the group of Oscar Kuipers, Molecular Genetics, investigating stress induced gene expression of the lactic acid bacterium model organism L. lactis while also sequencing its genome in the pre-NGS era. After his PhD, he started as an IRCSET postdoctoral fellow at University College Cork in Ireland, analysing (meta-) genomes and transcriptomes of intestinal tract bacteria. He returned to the Netherlands to Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen pioneering mutant library sequencing (Tn-seq) and genomic epidemiology of pneumococcus as a Marie Curie fellow before joining Utrecht University.  Besides his research, he teaches bioinformatics, bacterial genomics and molecular epidemiology. 

Abstract: This talk will cover two examples of investigating bacterial genetic content and the association with source and phenotype: Campylobacter and bacterial iridescence.