Sonja-Verena Albers

Sonja-Verena Albers is a German microbiologist who is a professor at the University of Freiburg. Her research focuses on the cell biology of the archaea Sulfolobus acidocaldarius and Haloferax volcanii. She was elected Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology in 2023.

Early life and education Albers attended high school in Hamburg. She studied biology at the University of Würzburg, during which time she completed an internship at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and became interested in Archaea. In 2014 she was made a professor of microbiology at the University of Freiburg.

Albers has investigated the structure-property relationships of archaea and the molecular mechanisms that underpin the transmission of environmental cues to its motility structure. Archaea, one of the three domains of life, are single-cell life forms without a nucleus. They adapt to extreme living conditions (e.g. hot sulphur springs, salty lakes), are found in a variety of environments around the world. She has studied fossils of archaea, which provide evidence of at least 3.5 billion years of life on Earth.

Albers used cryogenic electron microscopy to unravel the structure of archaea thread. Her work showed that the subunits of threads are interconnected via donor strand complementation, they have evolved differently from one another. 2023 Elected Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology

Selected publications