Collaborative Research: MIM: The impact of the fungal microbiome in metal tolerance and soil biogeochemical transformations

有些金属是生命必需的营养素，而有些则是非必需的，甚至对生物体有害。真菌和细菌是微生物，通常生活在一个密切的协会，并在转化和解毒环境中的金属发挥关键作用。尽管这一重要性，有相对较少的了解如何细菌和真菌之间的相互作用影响的转化和/或解毒的金属。该项目的目标是通过确定真菌-细菌相互作用如何影响金属转化来解决这一知识缺口。这将通过采用先进的多学科研究方法来实现，国家的科学分析技术。通过该项目获得的知识将允许金属转化的工程控制，用于环境净化，生物精炼，纳米颗粒生产和其他有益应用的广泛应用。这项研究的成功完成具有通过改善环境修复和工业制造造福社会的强大潜力。该项目将通过为学生研究人员提供独特的培训机会来改善国家的STEM劳动力，这些学生研究人员将环境工程，微生物学，地球化学，生物信息学和艺术等不同领域联系起来。金属污染的修复是一项重大的环境挑战，因为与许多有机污染物不同，金属物种不能降解，只能提取或生物转化为毒性较小的形式。虽然过去生物转化金属的方法主要集中在单一微生物上，但宿主-微生物组相互作用已显示出生物转化周围环境和提高宿主弹性的潜力。然而，微生物宿主-微生物组系统的金属生物转化机制在很大程度上是未知的。该项目的总体目标是阐明控制真菌微生物组的生命规则。这一目标将通过对真菌微生物组的具体关注来实现，真菌微生物组包括真菌宿主、内共生体（内细菌）和共生体（生活在细胞外的外细菌）作为模型宿主微生物组系统。该项目旨在实现这一目标的具体研究目标是：了解金属和类金属对真菌微生物群（兼性和强制性）的多样性和传播的影响;并通过介导金属离子，纳米颗粒或其他金属物种的吸收，转化和吸附来确定真菌微生物群在金属耐受性中的作用。一个深度整合的多学科方法将被用来研究生理，遗传/基因组和代谢过程，这些过程控制着金属存在下真菌微生物组的结构和功能。这将使用新的科学同位素探测，先进的显微镜，光谱学和综合基因组学，转录组学和金属组学来阐明微生物组如何影响宿主对金属离子的代谢活性。这项研究的成功完成具有很强的潜力，以确定新的基因和/或途径的金属耐受性和生物转化，以及扩大我们的机械理解的结构和功能的真菌微生物组在自然界中。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，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。

Some metals are essential nutrients for life, while some are non-essential or even harmful to living organisms. Fungi and bacteria are microorganisms that often live in a close association and play a key role in transforming and detoxifying metals in the environment. In spite of this importance, there is relatively little understanding of how the interactions between bacteria and fungi influence the transformation and/or detoxification of metals. The goal of this project is to address this knowledge gap by identifying how fungal-bacterial interactions affect metal transformation. This will be achieved through a novel multidisciplinary research approach employing advanced, state-of-the-science analytical techniques. Knowledge gained through this project will allow the engineered control of metal transformations for a wide range of applications in environmental cleanup, biorefining, production of nanoparticles, and other beneficial applications. Successful completion of this research has strong potential to benefit society through improvements in environmental remediation and industrial manufacturing. This project will improve the Nation’s STEM workforce by providing a unique training opportunity for student researchers that bridges diverse fields such as environmental engineering, microbiology, geochemistry, bioinformatics, and art.Remediation of metal contamination is a major environmental challenge because, unlike many organic pollutants, metal species cannot be degraded and can only be extracted or biotransformed to less toxic forms. While past approaches to biotransform metals have focused primarily on single microorganisms, host-microbiome interactions have shown potential to biotransform surrounding environments and improve host resiliency. However, the mechanisms for metal biotransformation by microbial host-microbiome systems are largely unknown. The overall goal of this project is to elucidate the rules of life that govern fungal microbiomes. This goal will be achieved through a specific focus on fungal microbiomes, which include a fungal host, endosymbionts (endobacteria), and symbionts (exobacteria that live extracellularly) as a model host-microbiome system. The specific research objectives of this project designed to achieve the goal are to: understand the effects of metals and metalloids on the diversity and transmission of fungal microbiomes (facultative and obligatory); and determine the role of fungal microbiomes in metal tolerance by mediating the uptake, transformation, and sorption of metal ions, nanoparticles, or other metal species. A deeply integrated multidisciplinary approach will be used to investigate physiological, genetic/genomic, and metabolic processes that govern the structure and function of fungal microbiomes in the presence of metals. This will be achieved using novel state-of-the-science isotope probing, advanced microscopy, spectroscopy, and integrated genomics, transcriptomics, and metallomics to elucidate how the microbiome influences the metabolic activity of the host towards metal ions. Successful completion of this research has strong potential to identify new genes and/or pathways for metal tolerance and biotransformation, as well as expand our mechanistic understanding of the structure and function of fungal microbiomes in nature. This knowledge has strong potential to benefit society by facilitating applications in remediation, water treatment, electronics manufacturing, antimicrobial production, medicine, and related fields.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.