Topography of Microbial Assemblages

微生物组合的地形

• 批准号: NE/F014384/1
• 负责人: Andrew Whiteley
• 金额: $ 11.57万
• 依托单位: NERC CEH (Up to 30.11.2019)
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FF014384%2F1
• 关键词: Topography; Microbial; Assemblages

Microorganisms are everywhere and they are fundamentally important. They were the earliest form of life on the planet and have been around for 3.7 billion years; indeed for the first 2 billion years, bacteria were the only living things on the planet. Their activity changed the planet, changing the environment to allow other life forms to develop. Today, bacteria continue to be very important for the health of the global ecosystem since they are involved in and control all biogeochemical cycles. For such an important group, it is perhaps surprising how little we know about bacteria and archaea (another group of important prokaryotic microbes). This is partly because they are difficult to study, particularly in the natural environment. Classical approaches that involve growing bacteria in the laboratory do not work because more than 99% of bacteria cannot grow in standard microbiological media. But in recent years, considerable progress has been made in identifying the diversity of microbes in the natural environment. Genetic and metagenomic approaches have given us great insight into which organisms are present and, increasingly, the function of these organisms. However, these techniques operate at the level of the community and we still know almost nothing about the individuals that make up that community / and particularly how they interact. This proposal tackles two problems that have limited understanding of bacteria from the natural environment / how to manipulate such small organisms in a defined way and how to identify different 'species'. Using state-of-the-art technology, we will encapsulate bacteria from natural assemblages (both marine and soil environments) so that they can be manipulated. We will use a novel microscope to distinguish between different bacterial species. Using a combination of these two techniques, we will investigate how different bacterial species interact, either through supplying nutrients to each other or controlling the activity of the whole population through cell-to-cell signalling.

微生物无处不在，而且至关重要。它们是地球上最早的生命形式，已经存在了 37 亿年；事实上，在最初的 20 亿年里，细菌是地球上唯一的生物。他们的活动改变了地球，改变了环境，使其他生命形式得以发展。如今，细菌对于全球生态系统的健康仍然非常重要，因为它们参与并控制所有生物地球化学循环。对于如此重要​​的群体，我们对细菌和古细菌（另一类重要的原核微生物）知之甚少，这或许令人惊讶。部分原因是它们很难研究，特别是在自然环境中。涉及在实验室培养细菌的经典方法不起作用，因为超过 99% 的细菌无法在标准微生物培养基中生长。但近年来，在识别自然环境中微生物的多样性方面已经取得了相当大的进展。遗传和宏基因组方法使我们能够深入了解存在哪些生物体以及这些生物体的功能。然而，这些技术在社区层面运作，我们仍然对组成该社区的个人几乎一无所知，特别是他们如何互动。该提案解决了对自然环境中的细菌了解有限的两个问题/如何以明确的方式操纵这些小生物体以及如何识别不同的“物种”。使用最先进的技术，我们将封装来自自然组合（海洋和土壤环境）的细菌，以便对其进行操纵。我们将使用一种新型显微镜来区分不同的细菌种类。结合使用这两种技术，我们将研究不同细菌物种如何相互作用，或者通过相互提供营养，或者通过细胞间信号传导控制整个种群的活动。