Identifying Multi-omics of Microbial Function
EMSL Project ID
51811
Abstract
Soil microorganisms are key drivers of global biogeochemical cycles, impacting the flow of nutrients to all life on Earth and many ecosystem services we depend on, such as crop production and carbon sequestration. Predictive understanding of the relationship between soil microbial communities and ecosystem function requires comprehensive characterization of microbial community structure (DNA), function and function-associated molecules (proteins, metabolites), and the soil environment in which these microorganisms exist. However, because of the inherent challenges of studying microbial communities in soils, integration of soil multi-omic data (i.e., genomics, proteomics, metabolomics) with measures of microbial function has remained challenging. Thus, in vitro work is required to evaluate and establish connections between structure and function. However, these conditions are quite different from those in soil (e.g., liquid, homogenous media vs. complex, dynamic structure) bringing into question the applicability of such work. In order to address this knowledge gap, there is a need for studies which characterize multi-omics of soil microbial communities under conditions that promote or inhibit a target function, and that systematically build on growth media complexity from liquid culture to soil. The proposed work will use biological nitrogen fixation, a ubiquitous and vital ecosystem process, as a model microbial process to evaluate multi-omics of function. We will characterize multi-omics associated with nitrogen fixating bacteria under nitrogen-free and nitrogen replete conditions, respectively promoting and inhibiting nitrogen fixation. We will also characterize multi-omic differences resulting from liquid versus solid growth media. This work will contribute to identifying connections between microbial structure and function and provide valuable insight into the relationship between in vitro and in situ analyses.
Project Details
Project type
Limited Scope
Start Date
2021-04-15
End Date
2021-07-07
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members
Related Publications
Darian N. Smercina, Young-Mo Kim, Mary S. Lipton, Dusan Velickovic, Kirsten S. Hofmockel. 2022. "Bulk and Spatially Resolved Extracellular Metabolome of Free-Living Nitrogen Fixation." Applied and Environmental Microbiology 88 (12) 10.1128/aem.00505-22