Description du projet
Un aperçu du mécanisme de libération du carbone induite par les virus dans l’océan
L’infection du phytoplancton par des virus libère le contenu de ces derniers dans le réservoir de matière organique dissoute dans l’océan. En dépit de l’importance de ce circuit, ou shunt viral, dans l’homéostasie des écosystèmes, les mécanismes sous-jacents demeurent méconnus. Financé par le Conseil européen de la recherche, le projet VIBES entend lever le voile sur le rôle du shunt viral sur le mode de vie des bactéries. Les chercheurs auront recours à la transcriptomique et la métabolomique pour déchiffrer les mécanismes et les signaux chimiques qui régissent les interactions microbiennes. Globalement, le projet VIBES jettera un éclairage sur la manière dont les interactions à l’échelle microscopique influencent le cycle du carbone dans l’océan.
Objectif
The fate of carbon in marine environments is influenced by associations between heterotrophic bacteria and phytoplankton, mediated by chemical communication and metabolic exchange. Deciphering the nature of these associations is critical given the impact of marine plankton on biogeochemical cycling and climate regulation. Viral infection is a prevalent mortality agent of algal blooms in the ocean, leading to massive release of biomass to the dissolved organic matter (DOM) pool, one of the largest global inventories of carbon. This process, termed the ‘viral shunt’, is a key ecosystem process, but remains unquantifiable and mechanistically enigmatic. Furthermore, the metabolic composition of the DOM released following viral infection (vDOM) and its role in shaping microbial communities are largely unknown. In the VIBES project, we will disentangle the complexity of the viral shunt, and elucidate its impact on microbial lifestyles (mutualism and pathogenicity) during algal bloom demise. We will generate experimental approaches to study these bacterial lifestyles, and uncover the chemical language that mediates them. Our expertise in marine microbial chemical ecology, using single-cell transcriptomics to quantify host-pathogen interactions, and metabolomics to identify the chemical signals that govern microbial interactions, will pave the way for unprecedented quantification of the viral shunt. We will investigate the molecular and metabolic basis of virus-derived microbial lifestyles and their consequence for the flow of carbon in the ocean, both under controlled lab-based experiments and during complex interactions in the ocean. We will investigate how microbial lifestyles that specialize on vDOM can determine the partitioning of carbon between the dissolved and particulate fractions, representing carbon cycling and export, respectively. Ultimately, VIBES will enable to evaluate the importance of microscale interactions to the cycling of carbon in the ocean.
Champ scientifique
- social sciencessociologydemographymortality
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiological behavioural sciencesethologybiological interactions
- agricultural sciencesagricultural biotechnologybiomass
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
HORIZON-AG - HORIZON Action Grant Budget-BasedInstitution d’accueil
7610001 Rehovot
Israël