REGENSBURG (dpa) – Karl Stetter’s laboratory is like a sorcerer’s kitchen. The air is hot and sticky, it smells like sulphur and hissing steam is rising from huge cauldrons.
It is here that the professor of microbiology is raising exotic organisms, the kind which thrive in the primeval atmospheric conditions inside Stetter’s lab.His interest is focused on research into the most primitive forms of life which still exist on earth today and which have possibly been around going back as far as four billion years.Stettner has already been marketing his research results in the United States for years now through his own company. Now he is thinking of setting up a branch in the state of Bavaria in southern Germany.“Racing fireballs” or “smoking globes of sulphur” are the 59-year- old professor’s objects of attention. He collected them on volcanoes, near geysers and even at a depth of more than 3,500 metres on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, using a special submarine.It is in such places that to this day similarly extreme conditions for organisms exist such those on the entire planet earth tens of thousands of years ago.“I want to study the origins of Life and perhaps better understand them,” the scientist says, believing that this might make it possible to trace the common ancestors of all forms of life on the planet.Using DNA analyses, researchers around the world are meanwhile at work reconstructing the tree of Life and putting together the pieces of the puzzle from single-cell organisms through to mushrooms, plants and animals.Organisms which have been around for millions of years and can survive temperatures of more than 110 degrees Centigrade – 100 degrees is the boiling point for water – are also of interest to industry.In particular, pharmaceutical and petroleum companies, but also firms in the field of environmental protection, are interested in Stetter’s single-cell organisms. From the laboratory in Regensburg, more than 1,500 types of microbes are shipped to addresses around the world.The Regensburg professor’s research is so unusual that many experts consider it worthy of a Nobel Prize. In 1988 he already won Germany’s highest science award, the Leibnitz Prize.In 1994, together with his American colleague Jeffrey Miller, Stetter established the company Diversa in San Diego to carry out research into technological uses for the micro-organisms.“I have always recognised the potential of my research,” the biologist said. “But in Germany it was impossible back then to work in the area of genetic technology.”This has changed in the meantime. Now, young entrepreneurs are given professional backing by technology centres and other special promotional programs.Diversa, now with around 220 employees, is listed on the U.S. technology exchange NASDAQ. Stetter wants to bring part of the company to Germany – naturally in Bavaria, reflecting how important to him his home roots are.But in between time, he will be off again on another search. Next summer he will be heading for the Aleutian Islands off the Alaskan coast, searching the mountains and waters for new organisms to add to his collection.
