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

地球上一半以上的主要微生物群从未在实验室中培养过，其中大多数从未成为科学研究的明确目标，对它们的了解仍然很少。其中一组微生物是古细菌，这是一种分布在全球的多样化微生物群，栖息在陆地、地热温泉和海洋热液喷口。本项目的总体目标是大大扩展我们对鸭古菌的物种多样性、分布、生态功能和有机体生物学的认识，并为整个类群建立分类分类。更广泛地说，该项目旨在为研究研究不足的微生物生物多样性和将微生物生物多样性研究整合到有意义的分类学中开创先例。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。本项目以内华达州西北部的大沸腾泉和中国云南省腾冲县的温泉两个主要研究地点为重点，同时还包括对全球陆地和海洋地热系统的调查。具体目标是：1)将从自然样本中扩增的16S rRNA基因序列与数据库中挖掘的单细胞基因组和宏基因组数据相结合，发现新的古鸭群分类群并建立候选分类结构；系统发育学、系统基因组学、比较基因组学和生态位建模将结合起来建立一个候选的分类结构；2)通过稳定同位素标记实验、定量逆转录酶PCR和宏蛋白质组学等方法，验证了有关古细菌代谢的明确假设，为了解古细菌在自然界中的功能提供了一个窗口；3)为了培养、分离和描述Aigarchaeota纯培养物，将在实验室中建立富集培养物，并尝试采用传统和创新的方法分离和描述无菌培养物。大规模数据挖掘、系统发育、分类学、生态位建模以及现场和湿实验室工作的结合，涵盖了系统学和生物多样性科学集群的所有组成部分，旨在改变我们对古生菌主要谱系的认识，并为物种到域水平的进化提供见解。

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.