Acidic pit lakes: Novel biogeochemical reactors evaluated via multi-omics approaches

酸性坑湖：通过多组学方法评估新型生物地球化学反应器

• 批准号: 2016826
• 负责人: William Burgos
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-06-01 至 2024-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2016826&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Acidic; pit; lakes; Novel; biogeochemical

Acid mine drainage is globally among the most widespread and expensive forms of pollution.This project will investigate how to use sunlight and natural microbial communities to providecost-effective remediation of pollution caused by mining (acid mine drainage), thus improvingaccess to clean water for humans and the ecosystems that support them. In addition, theproject will contribute more broadly to the development of methods and new understanding ofhow microbial populations interact with minerals, organic compounds, and other microbialpopulations in the environment. This understanding is crucial in order to harness the enormousbiotechnological potential of microbial systems that can be engineered to provide essentialservices to human societies. The proposed work will improve environmental health, increasediversity in the STEM pipeline, and strengthen international scientific collaborations. Womenand underrepresented graduate and undergraduate students will be recruited to work on thisproject. This project will promote collaboration between U.S. and international researchers bybuilding on long-term relationships between the Spanish Geological Survey (IGME) and PennState, such that participants will benefit from international science and engineering training.The goal of this project is to identify strategies to stimulate sulfide production in acidic pit lakes.As a model system, we selected the anoxic deep layer of Cueva de la Mora (CM), a permanentlystratified acidic pit lake in SW Spain that is among the most intensively studied in the world.Two competing hypotheses emerged from our previous research: 1) Sulfide production islimited by organic carbon, or 2) Sulfide production is limited by zero-valent sulfur. The projectobjectives are to: A) Stimulate autotrophic and heterotrophic sulfide production in laboratoryincubations inoculated with the CM anoxic layer microbial community; B) Resolve the metabolicpotentials and activities of the active populations in the stimulated communities; and C)Identify interactions between microbial populations cycling C, S, Fe, N, and P under sulfide producingconditions. Tasks to address these aims include: 1) Conduct a field campaign tocollect large quantities of biomass from the anoxic layer of CM; 2) Conduct laboratoryincubations to evaluate sulfide production under different conditions; 3) Sequencemetagenomes and metatranscriptomes to identify the most abundant and active microbialpopulations; and 4) Construct conceptual species-level and community-level metabolic modelsto generate new hypotheses about how to increase sulfide production and thereforebioremediation potential. This project will contribute to a fundamental and mechanistic understanding of howmicroorganisms interact to produce and consume sulfide in acidic environments, which iscrucial to mitigating the toxic effects of acid mine drainage. The results will advance knowledgeof previously undescribed and novel microbial species, including details of their metabolicpotentials, enzymatic machinery, and evolutionary relationships. There are currently only 1-2sulfide-producing isolates able to grow at pH4, although the diversity of this group is probablyhigher and remains undescribed. Microbial communities in nature are made up of mutuallydependent populations that exchange metabolites, yet scientific studies rarely consider thiscomplexity explicitly. A significant merit of this proposal is that it focuses on a naturalenvironment with intermediate complexity, appropriate for expanding and adapting modelingtools developed for laboratory cultures for natural ecosystems. Documenting microbialinteractions in communities is key to understanding community assembly and to harnessing theenormous biotechnological potential of engineered microbial systems that can provideessential services to human societies.This 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.

矿山酸性废水是全球范围内最广泛和最昂贵的污染形式之一。本项目将研究如何利用阳光和自然微生物群落对采矿造成的污染（矿山酸性废水）进行最有效的补救，从而改善人类和支持人类的生态系统获得清洁水的机会。此外，该项目将更广泛地促进方法的发展和对微生物种群如何与环境中的矿物质，有机化合物和其他微生物种群相互作用的新理解。这种理解对于利用微生物系统的巨大生物技术潜力至关重要，微生物系统可以被改造为人类社会提供必要的服务。拟议的工作将改善环境健康，增加STEM管道的多样性，并加强国际科学合作。女性和代表性不足的研究生和本科生将被招募到这个项目中工作。该项目将通过建立西班牙地质调查局（IGME）和宾夕法尼亚州立大学之间的长期合作关系，促进美国和国际研究人员之间的合作，使参与者受益于国际科学和工程培训。该项目的目标是确定刺激酸性坑湖硫化物产生的策略。作为模型系统，我们选择了Cueva de la莫拉（CM）的缺氧深层，西班牙西南部的一个永久分层的酸性坑湖，是世界上研究最深入的湖之一。从我们以前的研究中出现了两个相互竞争的假设：1）硫化物的产生受到有机碳的限制，或2）硫化物的产生受到零价硫的限制。这些项目包括：A）在接种CM缺氧层微生物群落的实验室培养物中刺激自养和异养硫化物的产生; B）解析受刺激群落中活性种群的代谢潜力和活性;和C）鉴定硫化物产生条件下循环C、S、Fe、N和P的微生物种群之间的相互作用。实现这些目标的任务包括：1）进行现场活动，从CM的缺氧层收集大量的生物量; 2）进行实验室培养，以评估在不同条件下的硫化物生产; 3）测序宏基因组和宏转录组，以确定最丰富和最活跃的微生物种群;（4）建立物种水平和群落水平的代谢模型，提出关于如何增加硫化物产量和生物修复潜力的新假设。 该项目将有助于从根本上了解微生物如何在酸性环境中相互作用以产生和消耗硫化物，这对减轻酸性矿井排水的毒性影响至关重要。这些结果将推进以前未描述的和新的微生物物种的知识，包括它们的代谢潜力，酶机制和进化关系的细节。目前只有1- 2株能在pH 4下生长的产硫化物菌株，尽管这一群体的多样性可能更高，但仍未得到描述。自然界中的微生物群落是由相互依赖的种群组成的，它们交换代谢物，但科学研究很少明确考虑这种复杂性。这一建议的一个重要优点是，它侧重于具有中等复杂性的自然环境，适合于扩展和调整为自然生态系统的实验室培养开发的建模工具。记录微生物在社区中的相互作用是理解社区组装和利用工程微生物系统的巨大生物技术潜力的关键，这些微生物系统可以为人类社会提供基本服务。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

项目成果

Microbial carbon, sulfur, iron, and nitrogen cycling linked to the potential remediation of a meromictic acidic pit lake

• DOI: 10.1038/s41396-022-01320-w
• 发表时间: 2022-09-19
• 期刊: ISME JOURNAL
• 影响因子: 11
• 作者: Ayala-Munoz, Diana;Macalady, Jennifer L.;Burgos, William D.
• 通讯作者: Burgos, William D.