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

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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.