Get to know OABI.

It is one of the largest departments here at CXI and their activities span environmental microbiology plus various multidisciplinary applications such as the development and testing of nanomaterials for biomedical applications.

OABI scientists are working on nanomaterials and porous structures in the fields of regenerative medicine, drug delivery and cosmetics. In addition, their work focuses on the effects of nanomaterials on natural microbial communities, in vitro cell cultures and ex vivo tissue models.
It may come as a surprise, but other research directions of the Department of Applied Biology are the activities of microorganisms in relation to the safety of deep geological radioactive waste repositories, antibacterial and algicidal properties of novel photocatalytic materials, the impact of remediation interventions on natural microbial communities, and the development of test methodologies and systems for evaluating the interactions of cell populations with (nano)materials and active agents under simulated conditions.

Watch the video. Kateřina Černá presents microbiological research for a spent nuclear fuel repository:
https://cxi.tul.cz/video/oddeleni-aplikovane-biologie

The laboratories are well equipped, with A 35 anaerobic station, ION TORRENT sequencer, LIGHT CYCLER PCR tester, ZEISS fluorescence microscope, a fluorometer, a molecular laboratory, an INNOVA 42 incubator, an Azure Biosystems gel scanner and a NANOSPIDER nanofibre machine. There is a lot more equipment and facilities, but we won't get into that in this article.

It's a really broad scope that Alena Ševců's team has. And not just in terms of expertise, but also in terms of time: not just tens of years, but even millions of years.