People of Microbiology

Thijs J. G. Ettema is an evolutionary microbiologist and chair of the Laboratory of Microbiology. His research focuses on the exploration of microbial diversity with next-generation genomics and various cultivation approaches. At Wageningen, his research group discovered a new group of archaea, the Asgard archaea, providing new, compelling evidence that complex cellular life evolved from an archaeal ancestor that already contained several eukaryotic traits.