I will be presenting Chris and I’s research at the ISME 2018 meeting in the session: “PS05 - From stress to performance: environmental biotechnology”.

The poster number is 378A.

The presentation will be on Monday August 13th, 2018 from 3:30-5:30 pm, but the poster will be up all day.

If you will happen to be attending ISME this year, please make sure to drop by and say hi!

Title:

Quantifying the influence of nutrient loading on a photosynthetic mixed community

Abstract: Nitrogen, through its use in both energy conservation and the construction of cellular components, such as proteins and nucleic acids, plays multiple essential roles within all living cells. These diverse modes of employment are the result of complex and intertwined metabolic pathways both within and outside of cells. The nitrogen dynamics between microbial community members are not well understood, particularly in mixed photosynthetic communities, where a diverse combination of algae, cyanobacteria, nitrifiers, denitrifiers, and heterotrophic bacteria coexist. Within these systems, complex feedback exists between microbes and their environment, where environmental conditions, such as nutrient availability, affect the microbial community composition while the microbial community simultaneously modifies the environment. We carried out a series of experiments in two photobioreactors (PBR) containing photosynthetic mixed communities in an effort to understand how nutrient loading shapes microbial community composition, which in turn drives nutrient uptake. Water samples were collected daily from the PBRs to assess nutrient loading and removal characteristics and biomass samples collected at the end of each experimental condition were sequenced using 16s rDNA amplicon sequencing. Results from a variety of numerical ecology and machine learning techniques confirm that several forces shape the microbial community including deterministic effects due to nutrient availability, stochastic processes, and divergence of populations due to environmental selective pressure. By providing researchers with the ability to strictly control environmental conditions and repeatedly manipulate single environmental variables, experimental lab-scale studies, such as this one, are indispensible in delineating how nutrient uptake and transformation pathways influence both community composition and their surrounding environment.