Descripción del proyecto
Impacto del cambio climático en el microbioma de la costra biológica del suelo
La costra biológica del suelo, que cuenta con comunidades microbianas de la capa vegetal que viven asociadas a partículas del suelo, participa en numerosos procesos ecosistémicos fundamentales para los ecosistemas desérticos e influye en el ciclo global del carbono. La ciencia apunta a que el cambio climático es capaz de influir en los patrones de precipitación, los cuales pueden afectar enormemente a estas comunidades, así como a las propiedades del suelo y el presupuesto de carbono en las regiones áridas de todo el mundo. Por tanto, es urgente aplicar técnicas capaces de identificar los organismos activos que regulan los procesos edáficos. El proyecto financiado con fondos europeos MICROBIOCLIM abordará este reto mediante la implementación del método BONCAT (siglas de «biorthogonal non-canonical amino acid tagging», o etiquetado bioortogonal no canónico de aminoácidos, en español) junto con técnicas ómicas que estudien células activas en la propia costra biológica del suelo y registre la evolución del presupuesto de carbono edáfico en situaciones de cambio climático.
Objetivo
Biocrusts are topsoil microbial communities that live in close association with soil particles and constitute the living skin of drylands. They intercede in numerous key ecosystem processes that are essential to desert ecosystems and play a relevant role in the global carbon cycle. Despite their inherent tolerance to aridity, a growing body of literature suggests that forecasted alterations in precipitation patterns, a global imprint of climate change, has the potential to dramatically affect these communities. However, little is known about how this will alter biocrust microbiome functioning and how these changes will be echoed to the soil properties and carbon budget in global drylands. This lack of knowledge arises from the difficulty to reliably link culture independent traditional genomic data to soil function. Thus, there is an urgent need to implement techniques that allow the identification of active organisms driving soil processes. The main objective of MICROBIOCLIM is to gain a deeper insight into the effect of altered precipitation patterns driven by climate change on biocrust microbiome functioning in drylands. To tackle this objective, MICROBIOCLIM will implement Biorthogonal Non-Canonical Amino Acid Tagging (BONCAT) coupled to omics methods to probe active cells in situ in biocrust while tracking the evolution of the soil carbon budget under climate change scenarios. The research outlined here includes multiple spatial and temporal scales, which will allow us to gain critical knowledge to design strategies to preserve biocrusts and the ecosystem services they render. This project will also help fill a major gap in our understanding of the underlying mechanisms controlling soil respiration and their implications for carbon cycling in global drylands, both priorities of the H2020 and the EU Green Deal.
Ámbito científico
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryamines
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicssustainable economy
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiology
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Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinador
03690 Alicante
España