EAGER: Characterizing biological function across a persistent oceanographic "hotspot" in the NE Pacific Ocean

智力价值：每立方厘米的海水都是数百万单细胞生物的家园，这些生物是海洋中大多数生物活动的引擎。这些生物体形成了功能群落，对于我们理解海洋如何通过提供生态系统服务来造福我们，并通过疾病和有害的藻类水华来阻碍我们，是关键。影响生物体分布和活动的根本原因仍然难以捉摸，导致预测能力受损。这个项目将把海洋学研究带入后基因组时代，将基因组学和横切学与蛋白质组学、代谢组学和痕量金属分析的最新工具结合起来，以了解观察到的生物地理和生物活动的原因。该项目是对东北太平洋一个横断面上微生物群落结构和功能的多方面研究，该横断面横跨一个海洋“热点”，该“热点”是高营养、低叶绿素水域和沿海富铁水域混合的结果。这个项目适合作为一个急切的奖项，因为由一个高度多学科的团队首次将众多尖端技术结合在一起具有很高的风险。该团队包括习惯于在大空间和时间综合尺度上观察生物活动的最终结果的地球化学界的个人，以及询问生物体和群落的进化根源、代谢能力和生理状态的分子生态学家。该项目是一项综合研究的试验台，该研究包括一套完整的“组学”数据以及痕量金属的细胞配额。该项目将产生一个大型数据集，将与更广泛的社区共享，并由私人投资机构进行分析。环境中的细胞在化学环境中进行代谢过程。通过询问蛋白质组、代谢组和金属组形式的细胞功能，研究人员要求细胞告诉我们它们在环境中感受到什么，以及它们对感受到的东西有何反应。这些发现将代表着朝着重新定义我们如何研究海洋学的方向迈出了重要的一步，这样对微生物群落的全面了解就可以让我们预测海洋将如何应对正在发生的变化。广泛的影响：这个项目是在一个海洋碳和生物地球化学研讨会的基础上进行的，该研讨会讨论了分子生态学家如何与地球化学家合作，以更好地了解世界海洋的生物地球化学过程。预计这次概念验证巡航的成功完成将导致与正在进行的美国地理追踪计划的更大的跨学科计划。这个特别的项目将展示如何使用组学方法，结合元基因组学和地球化学采样，提供将海洋生物群的结构与功能联系起来的关键。作为该项目的一部分，将对下一代海洋学家进行培训，使其在多学科社区工作。本科生将参加邮轮，并将被带到使用产生的数据的研究项目中。将向整个海洋学界提供一个大型数据集，这样参与的人数将比参加巡航的调查人员小组多得多。

Intellectual Merit: Every cubic centimeter of oceanic water is home to millions of single celled organisms that are the engines of the majority of biological activity in the ocean. These organisms form functional communities that are key to our understanding of how the ocean benefits us through providing ecosystem services and hinders us through disease and harmful algal blooms. The underlying causes that shape the distribution and activity of organisms remain elusive, resulting in impaired predictive ability. This project will bring oceanographic research into the post-genomic era by joining genomics and transciptomics with state of the art tools in proteomics, metabolomics and trace metal analyses to understand the causes for observed biogeography and biological activity. The project is a multi-faceted study of the structure and function of microbial communities along a transect in the Northeast Pacific that crosses an oceanographic "hotspot" that results from the mixing of high nutrient low chlorophyll waters with coastal iron rich waters. This project is appropriate as an EAGER award due to the high risk associated with combining numerous cutting edge techniques carried out by a highly multidisciplinary team for the first time. The team includes individuals in the geochemistry community that are accustomed to viewing the end result of biological activity on a large spatial and time integrated scale, and molecular ecologists who interrogate organisms and communities for their evolutionary roots, metabolic capabilities and physiological status. The project is a test bed for an integrated study that includes a complete set of "omics" data along with cell quotas for trace metals. The project will generate a large data set that will be shared with the broader community as well as analyzed by the PIs. Cells in the environment carry out their metabolic processes in the context of a chemical environment. By interrogating cellular functions in the form of the proteome, metabolome and metallome, the investigators are asking the cells to tell us what they sense in the environment and how they respond to what they are sensing. These findings will represent a major step toward redefining how we do oceanography such that a complete understanding of microbial communities can lead us to predictions of how the ocean will respond to ongoing change.Broader impacts:This project follows on an ocean carbon and biogeochemistry workshop that discussed how molecular ecologists might collaborate with geochemists to better understand biogeochemical processes in the world oceans. It is expected that successful completion of this proof of concept cruise will lead to larger interdisciplinary program with the ongoing U.S. Geotraces program. This particular project will demonstrate how using -omics approaches, in conjunction with metagenomic and geochemical sampling, can provide the key to linking structure with function across ocean biomes. As part of this project there will be training for the next generation of oceanographers to work in a multidisciplinary community. Undergraduate students will participate on the cruise and will be entrained in research projects using the data generated. A large data set will be made available to the entire oceanographic community, so that participation will be considerably larger than the small group of investigators participating in the cruise.