Quantifying the impacts of environmental stress on marine microorganisms. Microorganisms underpin marine ecosystem health, yet there is limited understanding of how they will respond to different environmental pressures. This project will resolve this critical knowledge gap by developing a unique molecular platform for deriving quantitative stress thresholds for microbial communities inhabiting key reef habitats (seawater, sediments, invertebrates). Quantifying how reef microorganisms respond to ....Quantifying the impacts of environmental stress on marine microorganisms. Microorganisms underpin marine ecosystem health, yet there is limited understanding of how they will respond to different environmental pressures. This project will resolve this critical knowledge gap by developing a unique molecular platform for deriving quantitative stress thresholds for microbial communities inhabiting key reef habitats (seawater, sediments, invertebrates). Quantifying how reef microorganisms respond to a broad suite of environmental perturbations (temperature, nutrients, contaminants), will generate stress-response data that can be incorporated alongside eukaryotic data in environmental assessments, greatly improving the ecological relevance and reliability of risk and vulnerability assessments.Read moreRead less
Advancing knowledge of microbial symbioses underpinning coral health and reef resilience and predicting their responses to climate change. Coral reefs are complex, diverse ecosystems in which microbial communities form associations with host corals. However, the roles these associations play in coral stress responses are unknown. This project unlocks the black-box of coral microbial complexity and determines how the reef’s smallest members have the greatest influence on reef health.
A Changing Climate on the Great Barrier Reef: Present and Future Implications. The Great Barrier Reef is fundamental to the economy of Australia. This national and international icon needs to be preserved in the face of a changing world to ensure on-going sustainability of our marine resources. Ocean acidification, warming water temperatures, increased freshwater disrupt the sensitive symbiotic association of corals the major structure building organisms of reefs. Understanding how these enviro ....A Changing Climate on the Great Barrier Reef: Present and Future Implications. The Great Barrier Reef is fundamental to the economy of Australia. This national and international icon needs to be preserved in the face of a changing world to ensure on-going sustainability of our marine resources. Ocean acidification, warming water temperatures, increased freshwater disrupt the sensitive symbiotic association of corals the major structure building organisms of reefs. Understanding how these environmental stressors result in the decrease in coral health is fundamental to prevent loss of our coral reefs and an important step towards preserving them for future generations.Read moreRead less
Revealing the structure, evolution and sensitivity of symbioses in basal metazoa. This project will explore the complex interactions between each component of the sponge holobiont (virus, bacteria, sponge) during thermal stress. This will also provide the first molecular assessment of sponge viruses and provide insights into how sponges may adapt to a changing climate.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130101401
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
A novel autotrophic biological nitrogen removal process driven by ammonia-oxidising archaea and anammox bacteria. This project will provide fundamental support to the development of more sustainable nitrogen removal processes. This would bring considerable benefits to the Australian wastewater industry and could potentially influence the way that biological nutrient removal plants are designed and operated.
An evolutionary landscape to better predict our future climate. Soil microbial communities are the most complicated and difficult to study on Earth, but their effects on our climate are profound. This project will examine the evolution of microorganisms and their viruses in soil using novel methods. It will uncover how the evolution of one microbial species influences the evolution of other community members. It will also apply a new model of evolution to the viruses that infect these microorgan ....An evolutionary landscape to better predict our future climate. Soil microbial communities are the most complicated and difficult to study on Earth, but their effects on our climate are profound. This project will examine the evolution of microorganisms and their viruses in soil using novel methods. It will uncover how the evolution of one microbial species influences the evolution of other community members. It will also apply a new model of evolution to the viruses that infect these microorganisms, constructing a viral ‘tree of life’. This improved fundamental understanding of soil communities will be used to study climate feedback from permafrost wetlands, a key and poorly constrained input of global climate models, improving predictions of our future climate.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE160100248
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$368,600.00
Summary
Annotating unknown microbial gene functions with organic matter change. This project intends to develop a new method for determining the function of microbial genomes. Microbes are all pervasive on Earth. It is now possible to routinely sequence microbial genomes. However, the function of most genes encoded on these genomes remains elusive, severely limiting our understanding of most ecosystems. This project seeks to develop new methods to assign function to uncharacterised genes, by correlating ....Annotating unknown microbial gene functions with organic matter change. This project intends to develop a new method for determining the function of microbial genomes. Microbes are all pervasive on Earth. It is now possible to routinely sequence microbial genomes. However, the function of most genes encoded on these genomes remains elusive, severely limiting our understanding of most ecosystems. This project seeks to develop new methods to assign function to uncharacterised genes, by correlating changes in metabolite abundance with gene expression in a model permafrost thaw peatland. Determining the function of uncharacterised genes has widespread implications for microbial ecology and its numerous real-world applications, from determining soil greenhouse gas emissions to understanding human intestinal flora.Read moreRead less
Exploring the Black Box of Archaeal Methane Metabolism. This project aims to build on new discoveries about how ancient microorganisms belonging to the Archaea that process methane, a significant greenhouse gas. This project expects to generate new data about how these novel Archaea are able to generate/digest methane and other non-methane carbon substrates through metabolic pathways using an interdisciplinary approach. Expected outcomes of this Project include improved techniques to grow these ....Exploring the Black Box of Archaeal Methane Metabolism. This project aims to build on new discoveries about how ancient microorganisms belonging to the Archaea that process methane, a significant greenhouse gas. This project expects to generate new data about how these novel Archaea are able to generate/digest methane and other non-methane carbon substrates through metabolic pathways using an interdisciplinary approach. Expected outcomes of this Project include improved techniques to grow these ancient microorganisms, investigate how they process methane, and understand how they contribute to the global carbon cycle. This will provide significant benefits, such as understanding the how the cycling of methane and non-methane compounds by novel Archaea can be manipulated in anaerobic environments.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE170100428
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$368,968.00
Summary
Diversity and evolution of methanogens. This project aims to discover methane-metabolising microorganisms and link their metabolic capabilities to cryptic parts of the carbon cycle. To date, only a small fraction of microbial diversity has been characterised, so there are significant gaps in our understanding of carbon cycling, while the metabolic capabilities of undiscovered and widely distributed microorganisms involved in methane metabolism remain unknown. This project will study these microo ....Diversity and evolution of methanogens. This project aims to discover methane-metabolising microorganisms and link their metabolic capabilities to cryptic parts of the carbon cycle. To date, only a small fraction of microbial diversity has been characterised, so there are significant gaps in our understanding of carbon cycling, while the metabolic capabilities of undiscovered and widely distributed microorganisms involved in methane metabolism remain unknown. This project will study these microorganisms’ metabolic pathways using DNA sequencing, bioinformatics and cultivation techniques. By understanding these microorganisms’ metabolisms, researchers expect to assess how they affect global carbon cycling and climate change.Read moreRead less
Enhanced coral stress tolerance via manipulation of prokaryotic symbionts. The project aims to develop a novel approach to improve environmental stress tolerance in corals. Coral reefs are under threat from a range of stressors that have led to massive declines in coral cover and health worldwide. There is now great concern that the rate of environmental change is outpacing the natural capacity of corals to acclimatise, adapt and survive. Although it is important to address the root causes of cl ....Enhanced coral stress tolerance via manipulation of prokaryotic symbionts. The project aims to develop a novel approach to improve environmental stress tolerance in corals. Coral reefs are under threat from a range of stressors that have led to massive declines in coral cover and health worldwide. There is now great concern that the rate of environmental change is outpacing the natural capacity of corals to acclimatise, adapt and survive. Although it is important to address the root causes of climate change, a focus on strategies to mitigate its impacts is also required. This project explores the potential to augment the capacity of corals to tolerate stress through the manipulation of their associated prokaryotic communities. This project may result in novel coral reef restoration approaches.Read moreRead less