Project description
Coccolithophores and CO2: genetic and physiological adaptation to ecological niches
Coccolithophores are single-celled marine algae that surround themselves with tiny, highly structured limestone plates or coccoliths. They are responsible for most biogenic calcification or sediments in marine systems and are one of nature’s most prolific consumers of CO2. As CO2 levels rise, it is vital to characterise the effects on coccolithophores and the organisms’ geochemical impact on the environment. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the Cocco-Next project will investigate the physiological and genetic acclimations of the coccolithophore life cycle phases to inhabit different ecological niches, holistically including both haploid and diploid life cycle phases.
Objective
Human CO2 emissions are critically poisoning the earth's climate. However, sedimentation by marine primary producers contributes greatly to carbon sequestration, with coccolithophores, unicellular marine algae with cell envelopes composed of CaCO3, being the key contributors. Nevertheless, the extent of the biogeochemical impact of coccolithophores is largely unknown. They have a dual life cycle and can grow as both haploids and diploids, but past research has focused mainly on the diploid phase. Moreover, knowledge of coccolithophores is almost exclusively limited to a single species that is distributed worldwide, and can form blooms visible from space. However, this species is peculiar in many biological aspects and does not calcify in the haploid phase, therefore we need to develop more model organisms to represent impact of coccolithophores on the carbon cycle.
In this action, my objective is to understand how the physiological acclimations of the coccolithophore life cycle phases allow them to inhabit different ecological niches. I will implement a multidisciplinary approach to investigate two levels of complexity: how environmental factors influence physiology and which genes contribute to distinct genetic programs. To this end, I will work on a widespread coccolithophore species that calcifies at both life cycle phases. I will characterize for the first time how photosynthesis (light-driven CO2 fixation) and photoprotection (dissipation of excess energy) differ between the two phases, and determine which environmental conditions trigger ploidy transitions. To investigate the underlying genetic factors, I will then sequence the genome and, in both phases, the transcriptome.
Overall, the ambition of the Cocco-Next project is to provide important insights into the interplay between life cycles, ecological niches, and biological CO2 sequestration and beyond, create novel, interconnected and open datasets that will be invaluable to the oceanographic community.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologysedimentology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologyphycology
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinephysiology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsgenomes
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbotany
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Keywords
Programme(s)
Call for proposal
(opens in new window) HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-TALENTS-02
See other projects for this callFunding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
10000 Zagreb
Croatia