Ammonia oxidising archaea are among the most abundant living organisms on Earth and several genera have been isolated in pure culture over the last decade. However, the lack of a genetic system remains a major hurdle for addressing mechanistic questions in ammonia oxidising archaea. The aim of this project is to establish a genetic system for our model terrestrial Thaumarchaea, which will help us answer key questions about their metabolism and adaptation to the environment.

​

Mutagenesis systems have been previously developed for several other archaeal lineages, including halophiles, methanogens and extremophiles. We are especially inspired by the recent developments on the CRISPR-based mutagenesis in archaea and believe that this could be a powerful route to perform gene deletion and editing in ammonia oxidising archaea.