Rules of life in CO2-driven microbial communities: Microbiome engineering for a Net Zero future

二氧化碳驱动的微生物群落的生命规则：净零未来的微生物组工程

• 批准号: BB/Y003195/1
• 负责人: Sophie Nixon
• 金额: $ 563.71万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FY003195%2F1
• 关键词: Rules; life; CO2; driven; microbial

Microbial communities (often called microbiomes) are everywhere; on our skin, in our gut, in the soil we rely on to grow our food, indeed in almost every habitable environment on the planet. Members of microbiomes interact with one another in myriad ways which we are only just beginning to appreciate, thanks largely to powerful new tools at our disposal. In this ambitious, multidisciplinary project, we bring together expertise to use these tools to unearth the 'rules of life' that govern the interactions between microbial community members, with the view to develop predictive approaches that can help us to understand and control microbiome function. Drawing on low diversity communities that inhabit geothermal springs, we will interrogate the metabolic, ecological and evolutionary interactions between community members that collectively govern the conversion of CO2 into value-added products. These products span primary metabolites that result from direct microbial growth (and hold value as platform chemicals for manufacturing industries and as biofuels), as well as secondary metabolites that are not directly liked to growth but that play ill-defined roles in microbial communities, and often harbour bioactive properties of high value to society (e.g. antibiotics, anticancers). We will use synthetic biology approaches to engineer the microbiome and its metabolic pathways of interest, both as a learning tool with which to test hypotheses on metabolite production and function, and as a means to augment the CO2 bioconversion capacity of the system for future biotechnological development. In parallel, we will apply ecological and metabolic modelling approaches to continue to generate hypotheses that can be tested with our model system, and which will be integrated into new predictive tools to accurately infer function from microbiome genomic data. Crucially, these approaches will work in tandem to help resolve the microbe-microbe interactions that drive this model system, which we have deliberately chosen to maximise the success of our ambitious goals. By unravelling the rules of life in these low-diversity systems, we will take the first major step towards understanding the more complex communities that impact our ability to grow food and live healthy lives. At the same time, our project promises to deliver new ways to turn waste CO2 emissions into waste, towards a more sustainable and Net Zero future.

微生物群落（通常称为微生物组）无处不在；在我们的皮肤上，在我们的肠道里，在我们赖以种植食物的土壤中，实际上在地球上几乎每一个可居住的环境中。微生物组的成员以多种方式相互作用，我们才刚刚开始认识到这些方式，这在很大程度上要归功于我们可以使用的强大的新工具。在这个雄心勃勃的多学科项目中，我们汇集了专业知识，使用这些工具来挖掘控制微生物群落成员之间相互作用的“生命规则”，以期开发可以帮助我们理解和控制微生物组功能的预测方法。利用地热泉中的低多样性群落，我们将探究群落成员之间的代谢、生态和进化相互作用，这些相互作用共同控制着二氧化碳向增值产品的转化。这些产品涵盖微生物直接生长产生的初级代谢物（并作为制造业和生物燃料的平台化学品具有价值），以及不直接生长但在微生物群落中发挥不明确作用的次级代谢物，以及通常具有对社会具有高价值的生物活性特性（例如抗生素、抗癌）。我们将使用合成生物学方法来设计感兴趣的微生物组及其代谢途径，既作为测试代谢物产生和功能假设的学习工具，又作为增强系统二氧化碳生物转化能力以促进未来生物技术发展的手段。与此同时，我们将应用生态和代谢建模方法继续生成可以用我们的模型系统进行测试的假设，并将其集成到新的预测工具中，以准确地从微生物组基因组数据推断功能。至关重要的是，这些方法将协同工作，帮助解决驱动该模型系统的微生物与微生物之间的相互作用，我们特意选择了该模型系统，以最大限度地实现我们雄心勃勃的目标。通过揭示这些低多样性系统中的生活规则，我们将迈出重要的第一步，了解影响我们种植粮食和健康生活的能力的更复杂的社区。与此同时，我们的项目承诺提供新方法，将废弃二氧化碳排放转化为废物，迈向更加可持续和净零的未来。