Microbial Membrane Adaptations in Response to Environmental and Engineered Perturbations: Implications on Attachment, Energetics, and Carbon Cycling in the Deep Terrestrial Subsurface
EMSL Project ID
51545
Abstract
The injection of fluids and proppants to fracture deep shale for energy recovery introduces microbial cells and substrates to low-permeability geological formations. Microorganisms in hydraulically fractured subsurface systems influence carbon cycling and biogeochemical reactions, leading to well corrosion, gas souring, and pore clogging. Recent research has applied meta-omics tools to reconstruct fermentation pathways, identify novel anthropogenic compound transformations pathways, and elucidate physical response to extreme conditions (e.g., high pressure). Through this FICUS proposal we propose expanding this work to address the following aims to: (1) investigate how microbial genomes, proteomes and transcriptomes predict intact polar lipid (IPL) membrane chemistry and elucidate how IPL membranes influence cell size, shape, and charge of halotolerant microorganisms grown across environmental gradients in planktonic versus benthic conditions, and (2) characterize the diversity of in situ microbial IPL membranes, and examine the influence of shale environmental and engineered conditions on membrane features, modes of energy conservation, and carbon cycling. We seek to integrate JGI and EMSL resources to characterize samples from both experiments and relevant field systems. Laboratory experiments involve model bacterial isolates and enrichment samples for continuous culture (planktonic cells) and drip flow bioreactors (biofilms) while field samples are collected from a DOE-funded hydraulically fractured field site containing natural gas wells (MSEEL II). We request sequencing resources from JGI to generate metagenomes and transcriptomes for experimental samples and metagenomes for field samples, and we propose to integrate this data with MS proteomics, MS lipidomics, NMR metabolomics and MS metabolomics pipelines at EMSL to expand our insight into these new highly relevant systems. Collectively, the proposed analyses will improve our understanding of how multi-omics tools predict metabolic/membrane pathways across broad environmental gradients, and will lead to an improved predictive understanding of microbial membrane features, biofilm formation mechanisms, and biogeochemical drivers in fractured shale systems.
Project Details
Project type
FICUS Research
Start Date
2020-10-01
End Date
2022-09-30
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members