Dimensions: The role of biodiversity for microbial adaptation to anthropogenic perturbations

维度：生物多样性对于微生物适应人为扰动的作用

• 批准号: 1241046
• 负责人: Konstantinos Konstantinidis
• 金额: $ 184.35万
• 依托单位: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-10-01 至 2018-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1241046&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dimensions; role; biodiversity; microbial; adaptation

Microbes represent the largest reservoir of biodiversity on Earth, drive the biogeochemical cycles that sustain life in most habitats, and cause or control diseases in humans, animals, and plants. Yet, fundamental aspects of this astonishing biodiversity remain poorly understood. For example, thousands of bacterial species inhabit a typical gram of soil or liter of seawater, each encoding a few hundred genes of unknown function. What this diversity means and how useful it is remains poorly understood. This project will employ advanced genomic techniques and mathematical modeling to study the genetic mechanisms that create diversity within aquatic habitats and to identify new, biotechnologically important genes and pathways for cleaning up environmental pollutants such as pesticides and petroleum-based hydrocarbons. The findings are expected to lead to a more predictive understanding of the role of microbial biodiversity for ecosystem function and resilience to natural as well as anthropogenic perturbations, and could have important health and economic benefits.New multi-disciplinary technologies to study microbes and their communities will be developed and made publicly available. These technologies will have applications across the fields of microbiology, ecology, evolutionary and systems biology, and environmental engineering. Graduate and undergraduate students, including minority students from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, will be trained at the interface of microbiology, computational systems biology and engineering, a pivotal, interdisciplinary area of contemporary research that is not adequately covered in traditional academic settings.

微生物代表了地球上最大的生物多样性水库，驱动在大多数栖息地中持续生命的生物地球化学周期，并引起或控制人类，动物和植物的疾病。然而，这种令人惊讶的生物多样性的基本方面仍然很少理解。例如，成千上万种细菌物种居住在典型的土壤或升海水中，每种都编码了几百个功能未知的基因。这种多样性的含义及其有用程度仍然很糟糕。该项目将采用先进的基因组技术和数学模型来研究在水生栖息地内创造多样性的遗传机制，并确定新的，生物技术重要的基因和清理环境污染物（如农药和石油基碳氢化合物）的途径。预计这些发现将使人们对微生物生物多样性在生态系统功能以及对自然以及人为扰动的韧性方面的作用有更深入的了解，并可能具有重要的健康和经济利益。新的多学科技术研究微生物及其社区将被开发和公开提供。这些技术将在微生物学，生态学，进化和系统生物学以及环境工程领域提供应用。包括波多黎各大学玛雅格斯大学的少数族裔学生的研究生和本科生将在微生物学，计算系统生物学和工程学的界面进行培训，这是当代研究的关键，跨学科领域，在传统学术环境中没有充分涵盖。

项目成果

Iterative subtractive binning of freshwater chronoseries metagenomes identifies over 400 novel species and their ecologic preferences

• DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.15112
• 发表时间: 2020-07-29
• 期刊: ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY
• 影响因子: 5.1
• 作者: Rodriguez-R, Luis M.;Tsementzi, Despina;Konstantinidis, Konstantinos T.
• 通讯作者: Konstantinidis, Konstantinos T.