Wetlands store more carbon per unit area than any ecosystem, and wetland restoration is a means by which society can sequester carbon, reduce flood dangers and improve wildlife habitat and water quality, yet the microbial communities inhabiting freshwater wetlands are only minimally characterized. This first-of-a-kind carbon sequestration project will employ metagenomic, metatranscriptomic and single-cell sequencing… [Read More]

Sequencing the metagenomes of microbial communities that inhabit soda lakes and soda solonchak (salt marsh) soils will uncover the microbial diversity of these extreme environments, and provide insight into the molecular mechanisms for adaptation to high pH and high salinity, the CO2-uptake mechanisms, and the pathways that generate energy from sulfur compounds. In addition, the… [Read More]

Interactions between marine bacteria and phytoplankton influence the fate of one of the largest active carbon reservoirs on Earth. To explore these associations and understand how they influence they influence the release of climate-relevant gases from the ocean to the atmosphere, this project focuses on a transcriptomic analysis of a bacteria-dinoflagellate model system in which… [Read More]

Aquatic microbial communities represent one of the largest reservoirs of genetic and biochemical diversity on the planet, and metagenomic studies have led to the discovery of novel gene families and a deeper understanding of how microbial communities mediate the flow of carbon and energy. However, most of these studies have been based on a static… [Read More]

The terrestrial subsurface remains one of the least explored microbial habitats on earth, and is critical for understanding pollutant migration and attenuation, subsurface processes such as limestone dissolution (affecting porosity), and the search for life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond. The deep and sulfidic Frasassi aquifer (of Ancona, Italy) has emerged as a… [Read More]

Biological Soil Crusts (BSC) are globally relevant complex topsoil microbial communities and locally important agents of carbon cycling in arid lands. Because arid lands make a sizeable proportion of all continents, the global standing carbon stock in BSCs probably exceeds 1014 g C, making soil crusts arguably the most extensive biosynthetic biofilm on the planet…. [Read More]

Oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) are widespread oceanographic features expanding due to global warming. There is increasing evidence that ocean warming trends will decrease dissolved oxygen concentrations, causing hypoxic boundary layer expansion that impacts the global carbon cycle, marine nutrient cycles and the climate system. To properly diagnose these transitions, this project launches a systems-level investigation… [Read More]

Deep-sea hydrothermal vents are one of the premier locations for discovering a wide diversity of novel non-photosynthetic microorganisms capable of fixing carbon dioxide at the most extreme conditions within our biosphere. This project represents the first comprehensive metagenomic survey of hydrothermal vent microbial communities, in part to develop an extensive metagenomic database to enable the… [Read More]

Wood-boring bivalves are only marine animals known to sustain normal growth and reproduction feasting solely on wood. The shipworm has two bacterial populations that can break down lignocellulose, one in the gut and the other in a specialized organ in the gills. The DOE JGI sequenced the only shipworm species adapted to cold water as… [Read More]

High-latitude regions are often seen as being relatively pristine areas due to their remote location and low population densities, but human activities are affecting these regions dramatically at a global and local scale. This project considers microbial communities of cold polluted coastal sediments from four geographically distant regions, in part to potentially identify key environmental… [Read More]