EAPSI: The Diversity and Distributions of Microbial Eukaryotes in Geothermal Environments

EAPSI：地热环境中微生物真核生物的多样性和分布

• 批准号: 1613771
• 负责人: Angela Oliverio
• 金额: $ 0.04万
• 依托单位: Oliverio Angela M
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-06-01 至 2017-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1613771&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAPSI; Diversity; Distributions; Microbial; Eukaryotes

Geothermal hotspring systems represent useful natural systems to assess microbial diversity and examine how environmental factors shape this diversity. Geothermal springs vary dramatically in their environmental characteristics and these gradients (e.g. temperature, pH) make hotsprings 'model' systems for understanding the ecological distributions of micro-eukaryotic communities. This project will investigate microbes in New Zealand hotspring ecosystems to characterize microbial eukaryotic communities. New Zealand is ideally suited for this work as it is home to thousands of unique hotspring ecosystems. This scientific bioinventory will be useful for scientists and policy makers to assess ecosystem uniqueness, biotechnology potential, and ecosystem health. This is particularly relevant given strong current interest in harnessing geothermal hotsprings for energy. This research will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Craig Cary at the University of Waikato and Dr. Matthew Stott at GNS Science, experts in microbial ecology and hot spring ecosystems. Eukaryotic microbes (e.g. protists) are abundant and critical to ecosystem functioning, yet remain poorly characterized in hotsprings. This study will use archived samples from fifty geothermal hot springs collected from the Taupō Volcanic Zone (TVZ) in New Zealand that represent extreme gradients in temperature (13- 100.6°C), pH (0- 9.7) to search for novel eukaryotic diversity and test hypotheses on how environmental parameters shape microbial eukaryotic communities in geothermal environments. High-throughput DNA sequencing combined with microscopic analyses will be used to yield one of the first assessments of the microbial eukaryotic communities in geothermal environments. Although the bacteria and archaea found in hotsprings and other geothermal environments have been studied for decades, there are no comprehensive study of the microbial eukaryotic diversity found in these environments despite increasing evidence that they can be abundant and active. Thus, this project will contribute to our understanding of the biodiversity of hotspring systems and whether there are endemic eukaryotic microbial taxa found in these ecosystems. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Royal Society of New Zealand.

地热温泉系统是评估微生物多样性和研究环境因素如何塑造这种多样性的有用的自然系统。地热温泉的环境特征差异很大，这些梯度（如温度，pH值）使温泉的“模型”系统，了解微真核生物群落的生态分布。该项目将调查新西兰温泉生态系统中的微生物，以表征微生物真核生物群落。新西兰非常适合这项工作，因为它拥有数千个独特的温泉生态系统。这一科学生物清单将有助于科学家和政策制定者评估生态系统的独特性、生物技术潜力和生态系统健康。鉴于目前对利用地热温泉作为能源的强烈兴趣，这一点尤其重要。这项研究将与怀卡托大学的克雷格卡里博士和GNS科学公司的马修·斯托特博士合作进行，他们是微生物生态学和温泉生态系统的专家。真核微生物（例如原生生物）是丰富的，对生态系统功能至关重要，但在温泉中的特征仍然很差。这项研究将使用从陶波河收集的50个地热温泉的存档样本̄新西兰的火山区（TVZ），代表温度（13- 100.6°C），pH值（0- 9.7）的极端梯度，以寻找新的真核生物多样性，并测试环境参数如何在地热环境中塑造微生物真核生物群落的假设。高通量DNA测序与显微镜分析相结合，将被用来产生在地热环境中的微生物真核生物群落的第一个评估之一。虽然在温泉和其他地热环境中发现的细菌和古菌已经研究了几十年，但没有对这些环境中发现的微生物真核生物多样性进行全面研究，尽管越来越多的证据表明它们可能是丰富和活跃的。因此，本计画将有助于我们了解温泉生态系统的生物多样性，以及在这些生态系统中是否存在特有的真核微生物类群。该奖项在东亚和太平洋夏季研究所计划下支持美国研究生的夏季研究，由NSF和新西兰皇家学会共同资助。