Collaborative Research: Chemical and genetic mechanisms driving microbial interactions in a model microbiome

微生物生活在整个环境中的复杂群落中，但目前尚不清楚特定的微生物如何成为这些群落中的成员或保持它们的作用。这个项目将探索细菌和真菌如何使用它们产生的化学物质来相互作用和它们的环境。这个项目中的细菌和真菌都来自于生活在世界各地消费的奶酪皮上的非常稳定的微生物群落。目前，对于细菌和真菌在发酵食品上产生的化学物质如何稳定或破坏其群落成员的作用，人们知之甚少。短期内，该项目将确定细菌和真菌在奶酪皮上相互作用所使用的关键化学物质和过程。从长远来看，研究这些微生物将使我们深入了解细菌和真菌在群落中运行的关键过程。这个相对简单的系统中使用的关键过程将扩展到其他复杂的系统，以探索微生物如何利用自己的化学物质影响其群落中的其他成员。多物种微生物群落(微生物群)是全球生态系统、人类和动物健康以及食品生产的重要驱动力，但我们对推动这些群落形成的分子机制的理解仍然存在巨大的知识差距。造成这一差距的一个因素是，很少有生物系统可以在实验室中解构和实验地重建原位微生物群落。由于操纵微生物群的挑战，人们对物种相互作用的遗传和化学基础知之甚少。众所周知，细菌和真菌会产生并将其很大一部分遗传物质用于生产专门的代谢物。然而，许多途径仍然是神秘的或尚未被发现，因为它们还没有涉及到生物活性筛选。在这个项目中，创新的质谱学技术将与微生物遗传和基因组技术以及一个新的模式群落系统相结合，以确定物种相互作用的分子机制，以及这些相互作用如何塑造微生物群落的形成和稳定性。这项研究将揭示微生物相互作用及其伴随代谢物背后的保守遗传途径。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Microbes live in complex communities throughout the environment, but it remains unclear how specific microbes become members or maintain their role in these communities. This project will explore how bacteria and fungi use chemicals they produce to interact with one another and their environment. The bacteria and fungi in this project are all derived from the remarkably stable communities of microbes that inhabit cheese rinds that are consumed around the world. Currently, there is a poor understanding of how the chemicals bacteria and fungi produce on fermented foods stabilize or destabilize the roles of the members of their communities. In the short term, this project will identify key chemicals and processes that bacteria and fungi use to interact with one another on cheese rinds. In the long term, studying these microbes will give insight into the key processes bacteria and fungi use to operate within a community. The key processes used in this relatively simple system will be extended to other complex systems to explore how microbes use their own chemistry to affect other members in their communities. Multispecies microbial communities (microbiomes) are important drivers of global ecosystems, human and animal health, and food production, but our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that drive the formation of these communities remains a significant gap in knowledge. A contributing factor to this gap is the fact that few biological systems are available where in situ microbial communities can be deconstructed and experimentally recreated in the lab. Because of the challenges in manipulating microbiomes, very little is known about the genetic and chemical basis of species interactions. Bacteria and fungi are known to produce and dedicate a large part of their genetic material to the production of specialized metabolites. However, many of the pathways remain cryptic or have yet to be discovered because they have not been implicated in bioactivity screening. In this project innovative mass spectrometry techniques will be combined with microbial genetic and genomic techniques and a novel model community system to determine the molecular mechanisms of species interactions and how these interactions shape the formation and stability of microbial communities. This research will uncover conserved genetic pathways that underlie microbial interactions and their accompanying metabolites.This 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.