Eco-Systems Biology of Polyphosphate Accumulating Consortia

0967646McMahon生物技术、生物化学和生物质工程项目的NSF奖项支持使用系统生物学框架来理解工程生态系统的行为。生态系统是一个废水处理过程，旨在通过生物方法去除污水中的磷，以保护地表沃茨免受过量营养物质的影响。负责除磷的生物（称为Accumulibacter）使用一种独特而复杂的代谢，但人们对此知之甚少。在这个项目中，我们将使用基于元组学的新技术，在实验室规模的废水处理系统中研究整个细菌群落水平的基因表达。系统生物学提供的综合和整体方法将使我们能够了解不同种类的Accumulibacter如何调节其生化途径，以最大限度地去除水中的磷。最后，我们将构建一个计算模型，该模型可以预测在正常和扰动条件下累积菌代谢的功能。这种理解将提高我们预测废水处理系统何时以及为什么失败的能力，但它也将成为系统生物学工具应用于使用生态学原理设计的细菌群落的有力案例研究。

0967646McMahonThis NSF award by the Biotechnology, Biochemical and Biomass Engineering program supports work to use a systems biology framework to understand the behavior of an engineered ecosystem. The ecosystem is a wastewater treatment process designed to biologically remove phosphorus from sewage in order to protect surface waters from excessive nutrient inputs. The organisms responsible for phosphorus removal (called Accumulibacter) use a unique and complex metabolism that is poorly understood. In this project, we will use novel techniques based in meta-omics to study gene expression at the level of the entire bacterial community in a laboratory scale wastewater treatment system. The integrative and holistic approach provided by systems biology will allow us to understand how different species of Accumulibacter regulate their biochemical pathways to maximize phosphorus removal from water. Finally, we will construct a computational model that can predict how the Accumulibacter metabolism functions under normal and perturbed conditions. This understanding will improve our ability to predict when and why wastewater treatment systems fail, but it will also serve as a powerful case study in the application of systems biology tools to bacterial communities that are engineered using ecological principles.