Karl Otto Stetter (born 16 July 1941) is a German
microbiologist and authority on
astrobiology. He is an expert on microbial life at high temperatures.
Career
Stetter was born in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
and studied
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
at the
Technical University of Munich
The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences.
Establis ...
. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on
lactobacilli
The ''Lactobacillaceae'' are a family of lactic acid bacteria. It is the only family in the lactic acid bacteria which includes homofermentative and heterofermentative organisms; in the ''Lactobacillaceae,'' the pathway used for hexose fermentati ...
. From 1980 to 2002 he was professor at, and head of, the department of microbiology and of the
Archaea center of the
University of Regensburg
The University of Regensburg (german: link=no, Universität Regensburg) is a public research university located in the medieval city of Regensburg, Bavaria, a city that is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university was founded on 18 ...
.
The majority of Stetter's research has focused on sampling, isolating and characterizing archaeal organisms which comprise the third
domain
Domain may refer to:
Mathematics
*Domain of a function, the set of input values for which the (total) function is defined
**Domain of definition of a partial function
**Natural domain of a partial function
**Domain of holomorphy of a function
* Do ...
of life, particularly undiscovered extremely heat-loving (''hyperthermophilic'')
bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometr ...
and
Archaea, also called
extremophile
An extremophile (from Latin ' meaning "extreme" and Greek ' () meaning "love") is an organism that is able to live (or in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e. environments that make survival challenging such as due to extreme temper ...
s, growing optimally between 80 and 113 °C.
Major discovery
In 1992, Stetter, along with
Robert Huber
Robert Huber (; born 20 February 1937) is a German biochemist and Nobel laureate. known for his work crystallizing an intramembrane protein important in photosynthesis and subsequently applying X-ray crystallography to elucidate the protein's st ...
, discovered a new species of
thermophilic
A thermophile is an organism—a type of extremophile—that thrives at relatively high temperatures, between . Many thermophiles are archaea, though they can be bacteria or fungi. Thermophilic eubacteria are suggested to have been among the earl ...
bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometr ...
near
Kolbeinsey Ridge
The Kolbeinsey Ridge is a segment of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge located to the north of Iceland in the Arctic Ocean. It is bounded to the south by the Tjörnes Fracture Zone, which connects the submarine ridge to the on-shore Northern Volcanic Zone ri ...
and named it ''
Aquifex pyrophilous''.
''
Nanoarchaeum equitans'', an archaeal microorganism containing the world's smallest known
genome
In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding g ...
, was discovered by Stetter in 2002 in a
hydrothermal vent off the coast of
Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
. This
archaebacterium was described in the scientific journal ''Nature'' in May 2002.
Discoveries
Among the other extremophiles discovered by Stetter has been ''
Pyrococcus furiosus
''Pyrococcus furiosus'' is a heterotrophic, strictly anaerobic, extremophilic, model species of archaea. It is classified as a hyperthermophile because it thrives best under extremely high temperatures, and is notable for having an optimum gr ...
'', which was found on the Italian island of
Vulcano
Vulcano ( scn, Vurcanu) or Vulcan is a small volcanic island belonging to Italy in the Tyrrhenian Sea, about north of Sicily and located at the southernmost end of the seven Aeolian Islands. The island is known for its volcanic activity and ...
in 1981. This extremophile was the source of
Pfu DNA polymerase. Stetter also discovered ''
Aquifex aeolicus
"''Aquifex aeolicus''" is a chemolithoautotrophic, Gram-negative, motile, hyperthermophilic bacterium. "''A. aeolicus"'' is generally rod-shaped with an approximate length of 2.0-6.0μm and a diameter of 0.4-0.5μm. "''A. aeolicus''" is neither v ...
'' and ''
Aquifex pyrophilus''.
Awards and memberships
In 2003, Stetter was honored with the
Leeuwenhoek Medal
The Leeuwenhoek Medal, established in 1877 by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), in honor of the 17th- and 18th-century microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, is granted every ten years to the scientist judged to have made t ...
by the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, an award given every 10 years to the scientist who has made the most outstanding contributions to the advancement of microbiology.
Stetter is a member of the:
*
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina
The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded ...
*American Society of Microbiology (ASM)
*Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
*Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Science (IGPP), UCLA
*Deutsche Gesellschaft für Hygiene und Mikrobiologie (DGHM)
*Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh)
*Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte
*Gesellschaft für Biologische Chemie (GBCh)
*International Committee on Environmental Biogeochemistry (ISEB)
*International Committee on Systematic Bacteriology (ICSB)
*International Institute of Biotechnology
International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL)*Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1999)
*Vereinigung für Allgemeine und Angewandte Mikrobiologie (VAAM)
See also
*
Carl Woese
Carl Richard Woese (; July 15, 1928 – December 30, 2012) was an American microbiologist and biophysicist. Woese is famous for defining the Archaea (a new domain of life) in 1977 through a pioneering phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA, ...
*
Hyperthermophiles
A hyperthermophile is an organism that thrives in extremely hot environments—from 60 °C (140 °F) upwards. An optimal temperature for the existence of hyperthermophiles is often above 80 °C (176 °F). Hyperthermophiles are often within the doma ...
*
Archaea
References
External links
Professor Dr. Karl O. Stetter(homepage at University of Regensburg)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stetter, Karl
1941 births
Living people
German microbiologists
Leeuwenhoek Medal winners
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Astrobiologists
20th-century German scientists
21st-century German scientists
Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina