Bacterial communities play an essential role in cycling many essential nutrients, including carbon, in aquatic environments. Because bacterial communities are so complex, and because carbon sources in freshwater are diverse, identifying the discrete roles of bacterial species in the mineralization, export, and storage of carbon in freshwater streams and wetlands has been impossible using traditional methods. The advent of new genome sequencing methods has recently made extensive, culture-independent sampling of microbial community diversity available. In this study, the researcher will use 454 pyrosequencing to characterize bacterial community diversity and to identify the roles that diverse microbial species play in the cycling of different types of organic matter. The resulting data will be analyzed to determine if bacteria specialize on particular types of carbon and to test hypotheses on specific metabolic functions of participating species.
The PI's study site has been chosen as one of 20 national, NSF-sponsored NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network) core sites, and the data collected through this and the PI's future research will provide a critical foundation for future NEON activities. The PI has targeted a portion of her research funding to support student participation in her laboratory research; these students will gain access to the most current techniques in microbial biology.
