Workshop: Microbial Diversity Molecules to Modeling Across Biological Scales; Summers, Woods Hole, MA

细菌、病毒和其他单细胞生物等微生物正在成为解决全球社会问题的关键工程组成部分，从人类健康到能源，再到向目前没有水的10多亿人提供清洁水。这是因为，在近40亿年的历史中，微生物“发明”了许多代谢反应，改变了地球的环境。要了解这些过程及其对生态系统的影响，并利用它们为社会带来效益，需要采用多学科方法。微生物多样性是海洋生物实验室（MBL）的一项高级研究培训计划，通过在夏季的高峰月份进行为期6.5周的密集沉浸式体验，增加传统的博士和博士后培训，届时生物学领域的杰出科学家将聚集在MBL。这个研究培训计划教授影响微生物生态学，生态系统功能和动物相关微生物组的前沿方法和概念。为了实现这些目标，参与者将在微生物科学、研究伦理和向公众进行科学宣传方面接受广泛的研究培训。这种经历具有广泛的影响，原因如下：1)该计划的变革性质提高了对研究和学术职位的保留；2)指导博士后研修生进行课程开发，提供宝贵的教学经验；3)来自科学界代表性不足群体的参与者将有助于科学劳动力的多样化。本课程将产生的研究成果包括可公开获得的资源和培养的细菌、病毒和其他微生物的分离株。这个研究培训项目的许多学生将成为微生物生物多样性研究领域的领导者，并在科学与社会的交叉领域发挥重要作用。这种研究培训经验整合了跨生物尺度的培训；从了解单个生物体中的一种代谢途径，到种群中单个细胞的动力学，再到了解微生物对生态系统规模的影响。该计划的目标是整合微生物学，生态学，进化，化学，计算科学和生物信息学等学科的培训，以塑造微生物多样性科学的未来领导者。为了能够预测自然系统中活细胞的行为，这是通过将建模、实验和功能与广泛时空尺度上的新兴细胞特性相结合来完成的。在今后三年中，将提供以下方面的具体培训：(i)利用大量公开的序列数据库提供的信息进行培养，重点是新的真核生物、病毒和微生物群落；（ii）分离和描述病毒在微生物多样性、功能和生态中的作用；（三）代谢通量在时间和空间上高分辨率变化的定量工具和建模。这一研究培训经验的目标如下：(i)参与者将通过课堂、讲习班和实验室教学活动的结合，接受微生物科学前沿变革性理论和应用方法的广泛研究培训；（ii）将整合对海洋、淡水和宿主相关微生物群落的深入和持续的纵向探索，以确定公开可用数据的5年时间序列中的微生物动态；（iii）博士后研究人员将在课堂和实验室中获得主动学习的直接经验。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses and other single cell organisms, are emerging as key engineering components for solving global societal problems, ranging from human health, to energy, to providing clean water to more than one billion people who currently live without it. This is because, during their nearly 4-billion-year history, microbes have "invented" numerous metabolic reactions that have transformed the Earth's environment. To understand these processes, their impacts on the ecosystem, and to harness them for societal benefits requires a multidisciplinary approach. Microbial Diversity is an advanced research training program at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) that augments traditional PhD and postdoctoral training through an intensive 6.5 week, immersive experience that occurs in the peak summer months when prominent scientists across biological disciplines convene at MBL. This research-training program teaches cutting-edge methods and concepts that impact microbial ecology, ecosystem function and animal-associated microbiomes. To accomplish these goals, participants will receive broad research training at the forefront of microbiological sciences, research ethics and scientific outreach to the public. This experience has broad impacts for the following reasons: 1) The transformative nature of the program enhances retention in research and academic positions; 2) Mentoring postdoctoral trainees in curriculum development provides valuable teaching experience; 3) Participants from underrepresented groups in science will contribute towards the diversification of the scientific workforce. Research products that will emerge from the course include publicly-available resources and cultured isolates of bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms. Many students from this research-training program go on to be leaders in research that incorporates microbial biodiversity, and in at the intersection of science and society. This research-training experience integrates training across biological scales; from understanding one metabolic pathway in a single organism, to dynamics of single cells in a population, to understanding the impact of microbes on the ecosystem scale. The goal of this program is to integrate training from the disciplines of microbiology, ecology, evolution, chemistry, computational science, and bioinformatics in order to shape the future leaders of microbial diversity science. This is accomplished by integrating modeling, experimentation, and function with emerging cellular properties across broad spatio-temporal scales in order to be able to predict the behavior of living cells in natural systems. In the next three years, specific training will be offered in: (i) cultivation that leverages information from the vast, publicly-available sequence databases, with a focus on novel eukaryotes, viruses, and microbial consortia, (ii) isolating and characterizing the role of viruses in microbial diversity, function and ecology; (iii) quantitative tools and modeling of high-resolution changes of metabolic fluxes in time and space. The objectives of this research-training experience are as follows: (i) Participants will receive broad research training in transformative theoretical and applied approaches at the forefront of microbiological sciences, through a combination of classroom, workshop, and laboratory-based didactic activities; (ii) Intensive and ongoing longitudinal explorations of marine, freshwater and host-associated microbial communities will be integrated to identify microbial dynamics over a five-year time series of publicly available data, and (iii) Postdoctoral researchers will receive direct experience in active learning in the classroom and laboratory.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.