Biochemical Journal Poster Prize winner

Laura Lehtovirta

Laura received a B.Sc. in Microbiology and Virology in 2007 from the University of Warwick. Prior to this she won the National Secondary School Biology Competition in Finland for two consecutive years and represented Finland in the International Biology Olympiad in Minsk, Belarus and Sydney, Australia in 2003 and 2004 respectively. During her undergraduate studies at Warwick she undertook two internships: first at Robert Koch Institute, Germany, examining the capsid protein of a Borna virus and the second one investigating cyanobacterial proteins at the University of Warwick. She is currently a final year Ph.D. student at the University of Aberdeen supervised by Dr Graeme Nicol and Professor Jim Prosser, and is investigating the diversity and function of thaumarchaeota in acidic soils. Thaumarchaeota have been implicated in the global nitrogen cycle, and although they are among the most numerous organisms on the planet, little is known about their metabolism and physiology due to their resistance to cultivation in the laboratory. Laura has recently cultivated a thaumarchaeon from soil which represents a distinct, previously uncharacterized evolutionary lineage and is the first and only obligately acidophilic ammonia oxidizer cultivated in over a century of studies on the microbiology of nitrification.