A systems biology framework to uncover rules governing robustness of a microbial community

This project is uncovering how a microbial community adapts to changes in its environment to enable powerful biotechnology solutions, such as the production of high value commodity chemicals in a sustainable manner. Adapting to fluctuations in resource availability is an energetically expensive process for a microbial community, requiring the modulation of hundreds to thousands of genes. This project is characterizing the molecular and cellular networks of a microbial community that drive this adaptive process. Activities in this project are using a systems biology approach to study a microbial community as a whole. Specifically, using modern sequencing technologies this project is investigating how controlled environmental fluctuations induce changes in the expression of all genes of a synthetic microbial community of two organisms that play a central role across diverse environments, including lake sediment, soil, and the human gut, contributing to a biogeochemically important process of cycling >1 gigaton of carbon annually.

By developing innovative computational modeling technologies these data are being analyzed to uncover how regulatory networks drive the dynamic community-wide gene expression changes, to coordinate flux changes through metabolic pathways, and ultimately manifest in overall improved fitness of the community. In so doing, this project is generating a predictive and mechanistic understanding of the adaptive processes of a microbial community. Hypotheses based on the predictive and mechanistic understanding of the adaptive process are being tested using targeted genetic and environmental manipulation of the cellular and molecular networks of the community. The research capabilities, predictive models, and knowledge being generated in this project are widely applicable to research and biotechnology programs in the public and private sectors, including projects across the MCB and IOS Divisions of NSF. To ascertain wide outreach, this project is leveraging a long-term NSF-funded effort to engage women, minorities, and disadvantaged students and teachers, to bring current science concepts and practices generated by this project into high school classrooms. Curricula developed in this project are being disseminated across all 50 states in the US and across >100 countries worldwide.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.