BBSRC-NSF/BIO: Collaborative Research: Focusing a quantitative lens on Synthetic Phototrophic Communities

微生物群落几乎遍布我们星球上的所有环境。这些环境包括人类肠道、海洋中珊瑚的表面和土壤中的植物根系。在这些社区中，细菌相互作用以维持环境健康。了解这些相互作用将揭示建立强大的，富有成效的社区的因素。 该项目将重点关注从黄石国家公园温泉垫中分离出的细菌。将获得对在这种极端环境中茁壮成长的细菌之间的物理和代谢对话的更深入了解，并用于模拟这些相互作用。所有参与大学将开发和分享关于微生物联合体的新课程。PI还将与当地科学博物馆和电视台合作开发项目，以鼓励科学素养和社区参与。 这个项目的重点是从黄石国家公园的温泉垫中分离出的嗜极端细菌。该方法将是查询垫内的整个细菌群落以及在实验室中定义的条件下生长的细菌的合成组合。测序和代谢组学技术的应用将揭示在不同的光照和营养条件下以及在昼夜循环中群落成员之间的关键代谢途径。这项工作将评估这样一种假设，即微生物群落就像一个集成的机器，而不是在实验室中无菌条件下生长的单个物种，并且这种集成保持了对自然栖息地中的生命至关重要的功能。还将进行实验，以分析光照强度、温度和微生物组成的突然变化如何影响垫的生长、结构，电子和代谢网络。这个合作的美国/英国项目由美国国家科学基金会和英国生物技术和生物科学研究委员会支持。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识产权进行评估，被认为值得支持。优点和更广泛的影响审查标准。

Microbial communities populate nearly all environments on our planet. These environments include the human gut, the surface of corals in the oceans, and plant roots in the soil. In these communities, bacteria interact with each other to sustain environmental health. Understanding these interactions will reveal factors that establish robust, productive communities. This project will focus on bacteria isolated from hot spring mats of Yellowstone National Park. A deeper understanding of the physical and metabolic conversations among bacteria that thrive in this extreme environment will be gained and used to model these interactions. New courses on microbial consortia will be developed and shared by all participating Universities. The PIs will also develop programs in partnership with local science museums and TV stations to encourage science literacy and community involvement. This project is focused on extremophile bacteria isolated from the hot spring mats of Yellowstone National Park. The approach will be to query the entire bacterial community within the mat as well as synthetic combinations of the bacteria grown under defined conditions in the laboratory. The application of sequencing and metabolomic technologies will reveal key metabolic pathways among members of the community under different light and nutrient conditions and over the diel cycle. The work will evaluate the hypothesis that microbial communities act like an integrated machine rather than as individual species grown under axenic conditions in the laboratory, and that this integration maintains functionalities critical for life in natural habitats. Experiments will also be performed to analyze how abrupt changes in light intensity, temperature and microbial composition impact mat growth, structure, electrical and metabolic networks.This collaborative US/UK project is supported by the US National Science Foundation and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research CouncilThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.