IRES: Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Microbiology and Biogeosciences of Siberian Deep Subsurface Permafrost

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Part 1This NSF IRES grant will provide undergraduate students with a rich international research opportunity in both microbiology and biogeosciences through their examination of unique 5,000-3,000,000 year-old permafrost sediment samples previously collected in the Northeast Siberian Arctic. Twelve students over the course of three summers will spend a total of six weeks at the Soil Cryology Laboratory of the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems of Soil Sciences (IPBPSS) within the Russian Academy of Sciences and complete their research projects under the supervision of academic mentors from both IPBPSS and University of Tennessee Knoxville. The project will give these students an integrated research experience including educational guidance and cultural enlightenment, while strengthening research collaboration between U.S. and Russian scientists.Part 2Permafrost occupies approximately 25% (23 million km²) of the Earth's continental surface in the Northern Hemisphere, yet its microbiota remains largely unexplored. The microbial communities embedded within permafrost for millions of years represent a ?gold mine? of genes encoding for low-temperature biocatalysts involved in biosynthetic and biodegradative pathways. Research projects of the students participating in this IRES program will be devoted to studying the biodiversity, as well as the interactions between microbial diversity, functional activity and physicochemical properties, within deep subsurface permafrost sediments. The proposed research will apply various state-of-the-art techniques such as qPCR, DNA hybridization, geochemical analyses, and metagenomics, in addition to traditional microbiological and analytical approaches. This research will fill in gaps regarding the taxonomic and functional diversity of the Siberian permafrost and contribute to the international knowledge about permafrost ecosystems. The broad dissemination and availability of metagenomic data from different permafrost strata will supply considerable knowledge to our understanding of the microbial ecology of polar regions with respect to both permafrost degradation and its impact on global warming.