Dimensions: Collaborative Research: Functional and genomic diversity in vitamin B1 metabolism and impacts on plankton networks and productivity

从人类到微生物，许多生物体都需要通过将维生素作为食物摄入或直接从环境中吸收来获得维生素。维生素对个体生物很重要，但它们也有可能改变整个生态系统的健康和生产力。该项目将探索作为海洋食物链基础的浮游细胞对维生素B1（硫胺素）的生产和消耗。它还将研究不同微生物在代谢硫胺素和类似分子时可能和谐和/或竞争地相互作用的方式。数据的网络分析将有助于确定这些物质在控制海水中微生物生物多样性和光合作用方面所起的作用，以及微生物对变化的海洋条件的反应。该项目还将培训博士后学者、研究生和本科生，并将支持一项教师专业发展计划，帮助农村地区低收入、历史上代表性不足和其他教育服务不足的学生从高中毕业，进入高等教育并取得成功，并从事STEM职业。浮游生物进化出多种获取硫胺素的策略，包括从环境中回收硫胺素相关化合物。本项目将：1)利用比较基因组学和进化（高通量DNA测序）研究浮游生物中与硫胺素相关的代谢适应；2)使用培养和分析化学（化学定子和质谱）测试重要的功能预测；3)测量浮游生物在自然和人工刺激的浮游植物繁殖中的相互作用。这次调查将加入北大西洋两个主要实地考察活动的海洋考察。这些结果将利用几种计算方法进行综合，以解释微生物群落结构的变化，生物化学、基因组和分类多样性在维持当今海洋生物多样性模式中的作用，以及潜在的未来海洋和微生物网络。硫胺素代谢途径的具体方面将在理解微生物化学相互作用的背景下进行探讨。这些不同水平的生物多样性和硫胺素循环将在生产性浮游植物大量繁殖和分层、少营养条件之间的过渡期间进行研究，这些条件是在几种环境变化情景下预测的温暖海洋的典型特征。

Many organisms, from humans to microbes, need to acquire vitamins by ingesting them as food or taking them up directly from the environment. Vitamins are important to individual organisms, but they also have the potential to alter the health and productivity of entire ecosystems. This project will explore the production and consumption of vitamin B1 (thiamin) by planktonic cells that are the base of the ocean food chain. It will also examine the way that different microorganisms may interact harmoniously and/or competitively in metabolizing thiamin and similar molecules. A network analysis of data will help determine the role that these substances play in controlling microbial biodiversity and photosynthesis in sea water, and the response of microorganisms to changing ocean conditions. This project will also train postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and underdergraduates, and will support a teacher professional development program that prepares low-income, historically underrepresented, and other educationally underserved students from rural areas to graduate from high school, enroll and succeed in higher education, and pursue STEM careers. Plankton evolved diverse strategies to acquire thiamin, including salvaging thiamin-related compounds from the environment. This project will: 1) survey metabolic adaptions related to thiamin in plankton, using comparative genomics and evolution (high throughput DNA sequencing); 2) test important functional predictions using cultures and analytical chemistry (chemostats and mass spectrometry); 3) measure plankton interactions in natural and artificially stimulated phytoplankton blooms. This investigation will join the oceanographic cruises of two major field campaigns in the North Atlantic Ocean. The results will be integrated using several computational approaches to interpret variations in microbial community structure, the role of biochemical, genomic and taxonomic diversity in maintaining biodiversity patterns of today's oceans, as well as potential future oceans, and microbial networks. Specific aspects of thiamin metabolism pathways will be explored in the context of understanding microbial chemical interactions. These different levels of biodiversity and thiamin cycling will be investigated across transitions between productive phytoplankton blooms and the stratified, oligotrophic conditions that typify the warmer oceans predicted under several environmental change scenarios.