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

地球上超过一半的主要微生物群体从未在实验室中培养过，其中大多数从未明确成为科学研究的目标，对此仍然知之甚少。艾格考古群就是这样一个微生物群，它是一个多样化的全球分布的微生物群，生活在陆地、地热温泉和海洋热液喷口。这个项目的总体目标是极大地扩展我们对黑线蜂属物种多样性、分布、生态功能和生物生物学的了解，并建立整个类群的分类。更广泛地说，该项目旨在为调查研究较少的微生物生物多样性和将微生物生物多样性研究纳入有意义的分类法开创先例。该项目将支持少数族裔服务机构和西班牙裔服务机构的各种研究人员，并将为在科学领域代表性不足的学生提供研究机会。此外，该项目还将促进一项教育外展计划，向克拉克县学区的K-12学生和教师提供内容知识，并为高中教师提供参加研讨会和实地考察的机会，以收集样本进行微生物分析。该项目集中在两个主要的研究地点，内华达州西北部的大沸泉和云南省腾冲县的泉水，中国，但也包括对世界各地的陆地和海洋地热系统的调查。其具体目标是：1)发现新的黑麦草分类群并建立候选分类结构，从自然样品中扩增并从数据库中挖掘的16S rRNA基因序列将与单细胞基因组和元基因组数据集相结合；系统发育学、系统发育学、比较基因组学和生态位模拟将结合起来建立候选分类结构；2)评估黑麦草的功能、稳定同位素标记实验、定量逆转录酶聚合酶链式反应和元蛋白质组学将检验关于黑麦草新陈代谢的明确假设，为了解黑麦子生物群在自然界中的功能提供一个窗口；3)为了培养、分离和描述黑麦草纯培养物，将在实验室建立增菌培养物，并尝试采用传统和创新的方法分离和描述无菌培养物。这里描述的大规模数据挖掘、系统发生学、分类学、生态位建模以及野外和湿实验室工作的组合跨越了系统学和生物多样性科学集群的所有组成部分，旨在转变我们对古生代主要谱系的知识，并提供对从物种到领域级别的进化的洞察。

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.