ANT LIA - Viral Ecogenomics of the Southern Ocean: Unifying Omics and Ecological Networks to Advance our Understanding of Antarctic Microbial Ecosystem Function

第一部分：非技术描述：众所周知，南大洋在全球碳循环中发挥着重要作用，也受到气候变化的不成比例的巨大影响。海洋病毒对海洋生产力的作用在很大程度上没有得到充分研究，特别是在这个全球区域。该团队建议结合基因组学、流式细胞术和网络建模来验证病毒生物地理学、感染网络和病毒对微生物代谢的影响可以解释南大洋净群落产量（NCP）和碳循环变化的假设。该项目包括培养一名博士后、研究生和本科生。它还包括与密歇根大学自然历史博物馆合作开发一个新的极地科学推广计划，特别针对中学生、教师和普通公众。该团队还将制定一个面向未来的科学（SFT）项目，用于底特律大都会社区的中学，并领导一个面向教师的暑期研究体验项目（RET）研究员。第2部分：技术描述：该研究将利用从南极环极探险（ACE）收集的数百个现有微生物和病毒样本。这些样本提供了对南极洲周围病毒多样性和微生物群落的第一次连续调查。利用生物地球化学数据对病毒网络进行研究，建立群落网络模型并预测净群落产量（NCP），这将为评估病毒在南大洋碳循环中的作用提供一种方法。利用尖端的分子和流式细胞术方法，该项目解决了以下问题：1)南大洋病毒种群如何/为什么分布在不同的环境梯度中？2a)病毒是否会干扰南大洋微生物群落的“关键”代谢途径和生物地球化学过程？2b)营养物质的可用性或其他环境变量是否驱动了南大洋病毒-微生物感染网络的变化？研究结果将用于开发和评估新型冠状病毒预测的生成模型，该模型将考虑病毒特征和病毒-宿主相互作用的重要性。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。

Part 1: Non-technical description:It is well known that the Southern Ocean plays an important role in global carbon cycling and also receives a disproportionately large influence of climate change. The role of marine viruses on ocean productivity is largely understudied, especially in this global region. This team proposes to use combination of genomics, flow cytometry, and network modeling to test the hypothesis that viral biogeography, infection networks, and viral impacts on microbial metabolism can explain variations in net community production (NCP) and carbon cycling in the Southern Ocean. The project includes the training of a postdoctoral scholar, graduate students and undergraduate students. It also includes the development of a new Polar Sci ReachOut program in partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History especially targeted to middle-school students and teachers and the general public. The team will also produce a Science for Tomorrow (SFT) program for use in middle schools in metro-Detroit communities and lead a summer Research Experience for Teachers (RET) fellows. Part 2: Technical description: The study will leverage hundreds of existing samples collected for microbes and viruses from the Antarctic Circumpolar Expedition (ACE). These samples provide the first contiguous survey of viral diversity and microbial communities around Antarctica. Viral networks are being studied in the context of biogeochemical data to model community networks and predict net community production (NCP), which will provide a way to evaluate the role of viruses in Southern Ocean carbon cycling. Using cutting edge molecular and flow cytometry approaches, this project addresses the following questions: 1) How/why are Southern Ocean viral populations distributed across environmental gradients? 2a) Do viruses interfere with "keystone" metabolic pathways and biogeochemical processes of microbial communities in the Southern Ocean? 2b) Does nutrient availability or other environmental variables drive changes in virus-microbe infection networks in the Southern Ocean? Results will be used to develop and evaluate generative models of NCP predictions that incorporate the importance of viral traits and virus-host interactions.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.