Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE230101346
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$418,893.00
Summary
Cave microbial metabolism as a missing biogeochemical sink. The aim of this project is to unveil the microbial biodiversity, novel metabolic capabilities and chemosynthetic primary production of subsurface ecosystems, such as those found in caves. Leveraging a powerful blend of geospatial, molecular and biogeochemical approaches this project expects to identify the microbial basis of subsurface biogeochemical processes driving the earth’s major elementary cycles. Expected outcomes include a pred ....Cave microbial metabolism as a missing biogeochemical sink. The aim of this project is to unveil the microbial biodiversity, novel metabolic capabilities and chemosynthetic primary production of subsurface ecosystems, such as those found in caves. Leveraging a powerful blend of geospatial, molecular and biogeochemical approaches this project expects to identify the microbial basis of subsurface biogeochemical processes driving the earth’s major elementary cycles. Expected outcomes include a predictive framework to assess and upscale the impact of these microbial communities on the environment. Benefits include predicting and responding to climate risks, such as the desertification of agricultural soils, by uncovering how microorganisms respond to nutrient and carbon depletion.Read moreRead less
The mobilome of the anaerobic methanotrophic archaea Methanoperedenaceae. Microorganisms play a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate, but how they are affected by our rapidly changing environment is not well understood. This Discovery project will study a group of microorganisms found in freshwater sediment that can consume the potent greenhouse gas methane before it is released into the atmosphere. We have developed new methods to investigate how genetic material is exchanged between mic ....The mobilome of the anaerobic methanotrophic archaea Methanoperedenaceae. Microorganisms play a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate, but how they are affected by our rapidly changing environment is not well understood. This Discovery project will study a group of microorganisms found in freshwater sediment that can consume the potent greenhouse gas methane before it is released into the atmosphere. We have developed new methods to investigate how genetic material is exchanged between microorganisms, and how this helps them adapt to environmental changes. Together, this will ultimately help us develop better climate change prediction models and contribute to our understanding of microbial communities that are crucial for environmental health.Read moreRead less
Global integration of microbial community and climate data. Microbial communities in the environment control the cycling of carbon and nutrients on Earth, but climate models do not directly incorporate microbial inputs. This interdisciplinary project will link planetary-scale climate modelling data with novel large-scale microbial community analysis, using climate information to provide insight into the fantastic diversity of microbial processes on our planet. The interdisciplinary approach will ....Global integration of microbial community and climate data. Microbial communities in the environment control the cycling of carbon and nutrients on Earth, but climate models do not directly incorporate microbial inputs. This interdisciplinary project will link planetary-scale climate modelling data with novel large-scale microbial community analysis, using climate information to provide insight into the fantastic diversity of microbial processes on our planet. The interdisciplinary approach will inform the next generation of climate models and better predict our future climate’s feedbacks. Conversely, it will make progress on the grand challenge of understanding microbial community function by enabling microbial ecology to be treated as a data-intensive machine learning problem.Read moreRead less