Collaborative Proposal: Biodiversity discovery and analysis of "Aigarchaeota", a globally distributed but poorly understood archaeal lineage

合作提案：“Aigarchaeota”的生物多样性发现和分析，这是一种全球分布但知之甚少的古菌谱系

• 批准号: 1557058
• 负责人: Jeremy Dodsworth
• 金额: $ 23.46万
• 依托单位: University Enterprises Corporation at CSUSB
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-05-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1557058&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Proposal; Biodiversity; discovery; analysis

Over half of the major groups of microorganisms on Earth have never been cultivated in the laboratory, and most have never been explicitly targeted for scientific investigation and remain poorly understood. One such group of microbes is Aigarchaeota, a diverse, globally distributed group that inhabits terrestrial, geothermal hot springs and marine hydrothermal vents. The overall goal of this project is to dramatically expand our knowledge of the species diversity, distribution, ecological function, and organismal biology of Aigarchaeota and to establish a taxonomic classification for the entire group. More generally, this project aims to set a precedent for the investigation of poorly studied microbial biodiversity and integration of biodiversity research on microbes into a meaningful taxonomy. This project will support a variety of researchers at Minority-Serving Institutions and Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and will provide research opportunities for students who are underrepresented in science. In addition, this project will contribute to an educational outreach program that provides content knowledge to K-12 students and teachers throughout from Clark County School District, and provide high-school teachers the opportunity to participate in a workshop and field excursion to collect samples for microbial analysis. This project focuses on two major study sites, Great Boiling Spring in northwest Nevada, and springs in Tengchong County, Yunnan Province, China, but also includes investigations of terrestrial and marine geothermal systems worldwide. The specific aims are: 1) To discover new Aigarchaeota taxa and erect a candidate taxonomic structure, 16S rRNA gene sequences amplified from natural samples and mined from databases will be combined with single-cell genomic and metagenomic datasets; phylogenetics, phylogenomics, comparative genomics, and ecological niche modeling will be integrated to erect a candidate taxonomic structure; 2) To assess the function of Aigarchaeota, stable isotope labeling experiments, quantitative reverse-transcriptase PCR, and metaproteomics will test explicit hypotheses about Aigarchaeota metabolism, providing a window into how Aigarchaeota organisms function in nature; and 3) To cultivate, isolate, and describe Aigarchaeota pure cultures, enrichment cultures will be established in the laboratory and used to try to isolate and describe axenic cultures by using both traditional and innovative approaches. The combination of large-scale data mining, phylogenetics, taxonomy, ecological niche modeling, and field and wet lab work described here spans all components of the Systematics and Biodiversity Sciences Cluster and aims to transform our knowledge of a major lineage of Archaea and provide insight into species- to domain-level evolution.

地球上主要的一半以上的微生物从未在实验室中种植过，并且大多数从未明确针对科学研究，并且仍然对其进行了较低的了解。这样的微生物是Aigarchaeota，这是一个多样的全球分布组，居住在地面，地热温泉和海洋热液通风孔中。该项目的总体目标是大大扩展我们对Aigarchaeota物种多样性，分布，生态功能和生物学的了解，并为整个组建立分类分类。更普遍地，该项目旨在为研究不足的微生物生物多样性和对微生物研究的生物多样性研究的整合为有意义的分类法而设定先例。 该项目将支持少数派服务机构和西班牙裔服务机构的各种研究人员，并为科学领域不足的学生提供研究机会。此外，该项目将为一项教育外展计划做出贡献，该计划为Clark County学区的K-12学生和老师提供内容知识，并为高中教师提供机会参加研讨会和野外游览，以收集样本以进行微生物分析。 该项目着重于两个主要的研究地点，即内华达州西北部的大沸点，以及中国云南省顿昌县的泉水，但还包括对全球陆地和海洋地热系统的调查。具体目的是：1）发现新的Aigarchaeota分类单元并建立候选分类结构，从天然样品中放大并从数据库中开采的16S rRNA基因序列将与单细胞基因组和元元组数据集结合使用；系统发育学，系统基因组学，比较基因组学和生态生态位模型将被整合以建立候选分类结构。 2）评估Aigarchaeota的功能，稳定的同位素标记实验，定量反向转录酶PCR和元蛋白质组学的功能将检验有关Aigarchaeota代谢的明确假设，从而为Aigarchaeota生物在自然中的作用提供了一个窗口； 3）要培养，孤立和描述Aigarchaeota纯文化，将在实验室中建立富集文化，并用于尝试通过使用传统和创新方法来隔离和描述轴突文化。此处描述的大型数据挖掘，系统发育学，分类学，生态位建模以及现场和湿实验室工作的组合涵盖了系统学和生物多样性科学的所有组成部分集群，旨在改变我们对古细菌的主要谱系知识，并将洞察到洞察力，以洞察到物种 - 到域级别的进化。