This course is based on the following basic questions which will be addressed in lectures, colloquia and laboratory exercises. We will illustrate the unique features that determine the ecophysiological potential of microbial communities with an evolutionary perspective in mind. "Microbial Geo-Genomics" will be the overarching theme of this year's course. We will look at microbial genomes as evolutionary archives and try to understand early earth history. By studying interactions between microbes and the abiotic and biotic components of their habitats, we will investigate how the diversity of microbial abilities has emerged and how it has shaped the modern earth environment. In computer supported models we will simulate habitat conditions and in practical laboratory exercises we will analyze fragments of prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbial genomes, analyze them with statistical methods and deduce geomicrobiological concepts from the genome and ecosystem information.

• Why prokaryotes inhabit every ecosystem
  What are the necessary physical and chemical conditions that allow for the existence and the broad natural distribution of microbes and what are the features that allow microbes to colonize every livable space on earth ?
   
• How prokaryotes interact with the environment
  How do prokaryotes sense environmental signals and respond to them in diverse habitats and by what means do they "communicate" with each other, their hosts and the environment ?
   
• Why prokaryotes are metabolically diverse
  Why do prokaryotes contain the greatest diversity of all living organisms with regard to types of energy metabolisms, catabolic pathways, metabolites and symbiotic relationships; but why do they express a rather low diversity of known biosynthetic processes and shapes ?
   
• Why prokaryotes evolved as specialists
  Although microbes exist under all kinds of environmental conditions and express broad adaptations to physical and chemical extremes, why did evolution not slowly lead to a single "super microbe" that possesses all the features necessary to exist everywhere and under all kinds of conditions ?
   
• How prokaryotes can be studied with molecular methods
  How are molecular and biochemical tools applied for phenotypic and genotypic identification of microbial species and how can they be used for diversity analyses and to evaluate the physiological potential of individual populations and its expression in whole communities ?
   
• How prokaryotes contribute to the evolution of life on earth and possibly on other planets
  How can the evolution of metabolic traits be linked to the role microbes play as biogeochemical agents in maintaining global physiology and climate and to their potential as pathogens ?
   
• Why prokaryotes offer excellent model systems for biological studies
  What kind of evolutionary concepts and generally valid biological principles can be derived from studying the ecological of the prokaryotic world ?