Comprehensive Genomic Analysis of Salt-impacted Microbial Communities in their Environmental Context

关注高盐环境：淡水是一种重要的资源，随着下个世纪人口的增长，淡水将面临越来越大的压力。由于过度使用地下水而导致含水层下降，可能导致盐度增加，威胁到饮用水供应和农业。社会将寻求新的方法来监测和管理受盐影响的生态系统。这一重大挑战可以部分地通过依赖于对微生物群落如何响应盐浓度变化的分子水平理解的方法来解决。来自澳大利亚Tyrrell湖的丰富的高盐微生物群落将被广泛的基因组学表征，以产生必要的信息，用于全面鉴定盐适应的分子机制，并确定这种土壤地球化学机制沿盐梯度沿着变化的微妙方式。美国的大部分地区，特别是加州南部和亚利桑那州的部分地区，在未来几十年可能会面临日益严重的盐度问题。随着我们的能源需求越来越多地通过以生物乙醇等可持续作物衍生物为形式的农业生物燃料生产来满足，这种情况可能会加剧。例如，生物化学信息可用于设计用于微生物生物燃料生产或农业的更耐盐的生物体。微生物基因组序列数据将成为公众参与科学项目的核心，该项目旨在与尽可能广泛的参与者群体分享科学发现的兴奋。这个基于网络的项目将由一个国际科学家和教育工作者小组开发。它将包括实地和测序设施的虚拟图尔斯之旅，以及一个门户网站，使参与者能够发现如何利用DNA序列来了解微生物如何促进碳循环，并发现它们如何适应环境的线索。

A Focus on Hypersaline Environments: Fresh water is a vital resource that will come under increasing pressure with population growth in the next century. Draw down of aquifers in response to over-utilization of groundwater can lead to salinity increases that threaten drinking water supplies and agriculture. Society will be seeking new ways in which to monitor and manage salt-impacted ecosystems. This significant challenge may be met, in part, by methods that rely upon a molecular level understanding of how microbial communities respond to changes in salt concentration. Abundant hypersaline microbial communities from Lake Tyrrell, Australia, will be extensively genomically characterized to generate information necessary for comprehensive identification of the molecular machinery of salt adaptation and for determination of the subtle ways in which this biogeochemical machinery varies along salt gradients.Salinization is acknowledged as one of the major problems facing agriculture. Large areas of the U.S., particularly parts of southern California and Arizona, are likely to be confronted by growing salinity problems in the coming decades. The situation is likely to be aggravated as our energy needs are increasingly met by agriculturally-based biofuel production in the form of sustainable crop derivatives such as bioethanol. Biochemical information may be used, for example, to design more salt tolerant organisms for microbial biofuel production or agriculture. The microbial genomic sequence data will form the core of a public involvement in science project designed to share the excitement of scientific discovery with the broadest possible participant group. The web-based project will be developed by an international team of scientists and educators. It will include virtual tours of the field site and sequencing facility and a web portal to allow participants to discover how DNA sequence can be used to learn about how microorganisms contribute to carbon cycling and uncover clues to the ways in which they adapt to their surroundings.