Rate My Professor Cleber Ouverney

Professor Cleber Ouverney serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at San José State University, specializing in microbial ecology within the field of Biology. He earned his B.S. in Biology from Occidental College in 1990, M.S. in Environmental Sciences from California State University, East Bay in 1993, Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1999, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Microbiology at Stanford University School of Medicine and The Forsyth Institute in 2005. Following his postdoctoral training focused on human oral microbes, Ouverney joined San José State University, where he established and leads the Ouverney Lab. His academic career emphasizes advancing culture-independent approaches to study microbial diversity and function in complex communities.

The research in Ouverney's lab characterizes uncultured environmental Bacteria and Archaea, particularly those with genetic counterparts in human-associated microbes, using molecular techniques such as next-generation DNA sequencing, fluorescence in situ hybridization combined with micro-autoradiography (STARFISH), and bioinformatics tools like Phylometrics and jsPhyloSVG. Key investigations include the natural sources and metabolic activity of TM7 phylum bacteria (Candidatus Saccharibacteria) from human dental plaque identified in activated sludge, prokaryotic diversity and plant growth-promoting bacteria in rhizospheres of organic versus intensive coffee farms in Brazil, and CRISPR-Cas9 enrichment strategies for rare taxa in the human oral microbiome linked to health outcomes like cardiovascular disease. Ouverney pioneered STARFISH applications for single-cell nutrient uptake analysis. His peer-reviewed publications include "Dissecting biological 'dark matter' with single-cell genetic analysis of rare and uncultivated TM7 microbes from the human mouth" (Marcy et al., PNAS, 2007), "Methanogenic Archaea and human periodontal disease" (Lepp et al., PNAS, 2004), "Marine planktonic Archaea take up amino acids" (Ouverney and Fuhrman, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2000), "In Search of an Uncultured Human-Associated TM7 Bacterium in the Environment" (Dinis et al., PLoS ONE, 2011), "Prokaryotic Diversity in the Rhizosphere of Organic, Intensive, and Transitional Coffee Farms in Brazil" (Caldwell et al., PLoS ONE, 2015), and book chapters in the Molecular Microbial Ecology Manual (2004) and Manual of Environmental Microbiology (2016). Ouverney also teaches the Biology Seminar Series at San José State University.