Dr Kateřina Fliegerová is a scientist based at the Laboratory of Anaerobic Microbiology (LAM) in the Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics (IAPG) of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic. LAM has a long history in rumen microbial research, including working on anaerobic fungi (AF).

​

Kateřina studied her degree at the University of Palacký, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Olomouc, Czech Republic. After graduating, she then undertook a PhD at IAPG entitled ‘Incidence of plasmids in ruminal bacteria’. Since her PhD, Kateřina has been a scientist at LAM.

​

Kateřina is involved in the study of AF diversity of ruminant and hindgut herbivorous animals, mainly using molecular techniques. However, she also cultivates AF strains and determines their enzymatic activities. Kateřina revealed uncultured novel AF in cow manure, which was later described in the scientific literature as the KF1 group.  Also, Kateřina’s strain JF1 serves as the reference strain of Anaeromyces mucronatus (NR_111156). As a member of the Ruminomics project, Kateřina participated in research (now published) which  showed that AF belong to the core group of the bovine rumen microbiome, and that Neocallimastix 1 is considered to be a heritable microorganism.

Kateřina is also interested in the biotechnological application of AF. In recent years, this has included microbial diversity analysis of biogas plants and assessment of the presence and survival of AF.