Microbes represent the largest reservoir of biodiversity on Earth, drive the biogeochemical cycles that sustain life in most habitats, and cause or control diseases in humans, animals, and plants. Yet, fundamental aspects of this astonishing biodiversity remain poorly understood. For example, thousands of bacterial species inhabit a typical gram of soil or liter of seawater, each encoding a few hundred genes of unknown function. What this diversity means and how useful it is remains poorly understood. This project will employ advanced genomic techniques and mathematical modeling to study the genetic mechanisms that create diversity within aquatic habitats and to identify new, biotechnologically important genes and pathways for cleaning up environmental pollutants such as pesticides and petroleum-based hydrocarbons. The findings are expected to lead to a more predictive understanding of the role of microbial biodiversity for ecosystem function and resilience to natural as well as anthropogenic perturbations, and could have important health and economic benefits.
New multi-disciplinary technologies to study microbes and their communities will be developed and made publicly available. These technologies will have applications across the fields of microbiology, ecology, evolutionary and systems biology, and environmental engineering. Graduate and undergraduate students, including minority students from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, will be trained at the interface of microbiology, computational systems biology and engineering, a pivotal, interdisciplinary area of contemporary research that is not adequately covered in traditional academic settings.
