Dr. John Heidelberg’s research interests are the field of microbial genomics. Specifically, he is studying the metabolic potential of the common and abundant marine bacteria by sequencing these organisms’ DNA. Because we are unable to bring the vast majority of bacteria into a pure culture, we are unable to use more common microbiological techniques to study these uncultured bacteria. Therefore, Dr. Heidelberg employs on of the newest DNA sequencers to look at the genomes of these bacteria without the need of first growing the bacteria in pure culture
