Sponsor: National Nature Science Foundation of China
Project Awardee: Liu Lemian
Period of Project: 2016.01-2018.12
During the last decade, technological progress in environmental sequencing has unveiled the prevalence of the rare microorganisms. The rare microorganisms have tremendous biodiversity, and some rare taxa may become abundant members under certain conditions. Therefore, the rare microorganisms play important roles in ecosystem. However, we still know little about the temporal dynamics of rare microorganisms, and the transition process and mechanism between rare and abundant taxa. Therefore, this project will use the modern molecular biological methods (16S rRNA and rDNA pyrosequencing and single cell genomics), combining the multivariate statistical and model analyses to study the rare and abundant microbial communities in a subtropical thermal stratified drinking water reservoir. The objects of this project are: 1) to investigate the temporal dynamics and patterns of rare microbial community on DNA and RNA levels, thereby answering the question that whether the temporal dynamics of rare microbial community are similar to that of abundant microbial community – the rare microbial community is subject to a series ecological process, having regular temporal dynamics; 2) to study the transition process and mechanism between rare and abundant taxa on different time scales, and to reveal the key taxa which participate in the transition and their adaption mechanism on molecular level. This project will improve our understanding of that how the rare and abundant microorganisms play significant roles in succession and diversity of reservoir microbial community and stability of reservoir ecosystem.