Julia Vorholt

Julia A. Vorholt (born September 15, 1969^[1]) is a full professor of microbiology at ETH Zurich and an elected member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.^[1] She earned her PhD in 1997 under professor Rudolph K. Thauer at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, for which she was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal, and is a German national residing in Switzerland.^[1]

Current projects of the Vorholt lab at ETH Zurich include:^[2]

• Phyllosphere microbiology: Characterizing and understanding standing microbial communities on above-ground plant surfaces, and their impact on plant health and productivity.
• Metabolism of one-carbon compounds: The bacterial pathways that allow growth on single carbon compounds, especially methane and methanol.
• Bacterial stress response: Pathways and regulation of mechanisms involved in bacterial stress response.
• Single cell technologies: Development of microfluidics, single cell force spectroscopy, and other techniques to gather data and manipulate individual cells.

In addition, work from her lab was significant in refuting previous claims by NASA scientists that the arsenic-tolerant bacteria GFAJ-1 could utilize arsenic instead of phosphorus in DNA and other essential biomolecules.^[3][4]

As of 2013 she had 90 publications,^[1] and as of 2015 her work has been cited approximately 4100 times.^[5]

Selected publications

• Chistoserdova L, Vorholt JA, Thauer RK, Lidstrom ME (1998). "C1 transfer enzymes and coenzymes linking methylotrophic bacteria and methanogenic Archaea". Science. 281 (5373): 99–102. doi:10.1126/science.281.5373.99.
• Delmotte N, Knief C, Chaffron S, Innerebner G, Roschitzki B, et al. (2009). "Community proteogenomics reveals insights into the physiology of phyllosphere bacteria". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 106 (38): 16428–16433. doi:10.1073/pnas.0905240106.
• Vorholt, Julia A. "Microbial life in the phyllosphere". Nature Reviews Microbiology. 10 (12): 828–840. doi:10.1038/nrmicro2910.
• Elias M, Wellner A, Goldin-Azulay K, Chabriere E, Vorholt JA, Erb TJ, Tawfik DS (2012). "The molecular basis of phosphate discrimination in arsenate rich environments". Nature. 491: 134–137. doi:10.1038/nature11517.
• Campagne S, Damberger FF, Kaczmarczyk A, Francez-Charlot A, Allain FH, Vorholt JA (2012). "Structural basis for sigma factor mimicry in the general stress response of Alphaproteobacteria". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 109: E1405–14. doi:10.1073/pnas.1117003109.

References

1. Vorholt, Julia (August 2013). "Julia Vorholt CV" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 April 2015. Retrieved 14 April 2015.
2. "Vorholt Lab Description". ETH Zurich. Archived from the original on 14 April 2015.
3. Erb TJ, Kiefer P, Hattendorf B, Günther D, Vorholt JA (8 July 2012). "GFAJ-1 is an arsenate-resistant, phosphate-dependent organism". Science. 337: 467–70. doi:10.1126/science.1218455. PMID 22773139.
4. Dan Vergano (July 9, 2012). "Discovery of an arsenic-friendly microbe refuted". USA Today.
5. "Google Scholar Citation Index". Google. Retrieved 1 April 2015.