Untangling the Complexity of Microbial Networks by Using Simplified Natural Communities
EMSL Project ID
47690
Abstract
The overall goal of this proposal is to understand the dynamics of both microbial populations and their gene regulatory networks in response to environmental perturbations and to elucidate mechanisms that impart robustness and stability in microbial communities. While the long-term aim of our research is to understand the dynamics of interspecies interactions in the natural environment, this is not presently feasible because of both the complexity of natural communities and a lack of adequate technologies. Thus, we will initially investigate simplified natural communities derived from microbial mats found in Hot Lake, a glacial endorrheic basin in north-central Washington. This will not only provide a way to understand some of the important regulatory processes that occur in natural communities, but also provide a test bed for the development of approaches for future, more ambitious studies. Using our simplified communities, we propose to develop flow cytometry-based techniques for deconstructing and identifying their major members to understand how their abundance and metabolic activity changes in response to alterations in salinity, photon flux, and photoperiod. This will also require the development of new techniques to relate the abundance of rRNA from a community species to both its numbers and biomass. We will also use RNA-seq-based transcriptional profiling to examine the gene expression response of each detectable community member to changes in salinity, photon flux, and photoperiod. Data from our studies, together with metagenome data from the Community Sequencing Project work being done at JGI, will strengthen knowledge of the dynamics of natural communities in response to environmental stress and provide field-testable hypotheses for study of the Hot Lake mat in toto. The combined capabilities of EMSL (flow cytometry, sequencing, fluorescence and electron microcopies, data handling and computational analysis) will be essential for the success of this project and will enable a new generation of sophisticated community analyses. The technologies and approaches that are developed in this project will not only be foundational in understanding the dynamics of the Hot Lake microbial communities, but will also be applicable to phototroph-autotroph interactions broadly, and help elucidate mechanisms of community responses to environmental stress.
Project Details
Start Date
2012-10-01
End Date
2013-09-30
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Co-Investigator(s)
Team Members