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

合作提案：“Aigarchaeota”的生物多样性发现和分析，这是一种全球分布但知之甚少的古菌谱系

• 批准号: 1557042
• 负责人: Brian Hedlund
• 金额: $ 63.27万
• 依托单位: University of Nevada Las Vegas
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-05-01 至 2021-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1557042&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Proposal; Biodiversity; discovery; analysis

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.

地球上超过一半的主要微生物从未在实验室中培养过，大多数从未被明确地作为科学研究的目标，而且人们对它们的了解仍然很少。其中一类微生物是Aigarchaeota，这是一个多样化的全球分布群体，栖息在陆地，地热温泉和海洋热液喷口。该项目的总体目标是极大地扩大我们对Aigarchaeota的物种多样性，分布，生态功能和生物学的了解，并为整个群体建立分类学分类。更广泛地说，该项目旨在为研究不足的微生物生物多样性的调查和将微生物生物多样性研究整合到有意义的分类中开创先例。 该项目将支持各种研究人员在少数民族服务机构和西班牙裔服务机构，并将提供研究机会，为学生谁是科学代表性不足。此外，该项目将有助于教育推广计划，为克拉克县学区的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，以收集微生物分析样本。 该项目重点关注两个主要研究地点，即内华达州西北部的大沸腾泉和中国云南省腾冲县的泉水，还包括对全球陆地和海洋地热系统的调查。具体目标是：1）为了发现新的黑古菌分类群并建立候选分类结构，将从天然样品中扩增并从数据库中挖掘的16 S rRNA基因序列与单细胞基因组和宏基因组数据集相结合;将整合遗传学，生物基因组学，比较基因组学和生态位建模，以建立候选分类结构; 2）为了评估黑古菌的功能，稳定同位素标记实验、定量逆转录酶PCR和元蛋白质组学将检验关于黑古菌代谢的明确假设，为了解黑古菌生物在自然界中的功能提供一个窗口;（3）为了培养、分离和描述黑古菌纯培养物，将在实验室中建立增菌培养物，并通过使用传统和创新的方法来尝试分离和描述无菌培养物。大规模数据挖掘，遗传学，分类学，生态位建模以及这里描述的现场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，旨在改变我们对主要谱系的知识，并提供对物种的洞察-到域级进化。