烃类广泛分布于近海、深海、极地、大洋各种海洋环境。烃类为众多海洋微生物提供了碳源和能源。海洋烃类物质既有上层和海底的自然过程来源，也有人类活动引起的大量石油泄漏。广泛分布的烃类降解菌在烃类矿化过程中，特别是在大量溢油后的环境修复过程中，起着关键作用。然而，细菌的烃类代谢机制，特别是烃类感应、信号传导、跨膜转运、代谢途径调控等机制还缺乏认识。相关认识不到位阻碍我们对细菌响应烃类过程以及烃类环境归宿的评估。本研究拟以海洋中最具代表性的烷烃与多环芳烃降解菌（食烷菌和解环菌）为对象，研究烃感应蛋白、跨膜转运蛋白、sRNA调控作用、烃趋化及信号传导途径等，目标是发现新机制、构建全局代谢网络，深刻理解海洋细菌对烃类物质感应、胞内转运过程，以及对不同烃类代谢途径的调控机制，研究结果将为评估烃类降解菌所参与的海洋生物地球化学过程与环境贡献提供参考。

Hydrocarbons and corresponding microbial degraders are widespread in global oceans, everywhere in coastal, pelagic, polar areas, and from the surface to deep. Marine hydrocarbons can be originated from natural processes at both sea bottom and upper layers, and maritime accidents with substantial oil spills. Hydrocarbons can be served as carbon and energy sources for a variety of microorganisms along the Earth historic time and all over the world. Microbes play a key role in removing the oil pollutants in the sea to restore the habitats of marine lives. However, we are still not sure how the bacteria response to the appearance and disappearance of these organics, especially at molecular levels like hydrocarbon sensing, uptake, and metabolic pathway regulation, which certainly discount our efforts in recognizing the microbes’ role in environments and to evaluate the fate of oil pollutants in environments. Here, based on the previous achievements, we tend to go further to dissect the processes at molecular level, from cellular sensing to intracellular metabolism of both aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons with Alcanivorax and Cycloclasticus as the representatives of two kinds of hydrocarbon degraders, aiming to find new mechanisms, and to construct the comprehensive metabolic pathways, to gain insights into the molecular mechanisms of cell sensing, signal relaying, cross membrane transport, precise regulation of different hydrocarbon pathways. Advances after these efforts will do helps to evaluate the contributions of such microbes in the biogeochemistry cycling of marine environments, in past and presently.