Project description
The role of microbial dormancy in extreme environments
Microbial life has persisted and thrived despite widespread changes in climate and geography throughout Earth’s history. Microbes use dormancy to survive extremes and environmental changes, and understanding this mechanism is crucial for grasping how life has co-evolved with our planet. The ERC-funded SIESTA project aims to explore the role of microbial dormancy as a regulator of ecosystems and biogeochemical processes on Earth. It focuses on the cryosphere, where microbes encounter extremes and alterations to their environment over daily to millennial timescales. SIESTA will assess the prevalence of dormancy in microbial communities and identify the triggers and timescales of dormancy. Moreover, it will connect dormancy to the emergence and survival of microbial populations and to the regulation of biogeochemical cycles.
Objective
Dramatic shifts in Earth’s climate and geography have profoundly influenced biological innovation and biogeochemical cycles. Despite widespread and extreme environmental change including global glaciations lasting millions of years, microbial life has thrived: accruing distinct phylogenies, morphologies, physiologies, and functions over geological time. Microorganisms use dormancy as a survival strategy to persist throughout unfavorable changes in their environment. Dormant organisms withdraw from the present environment and become part of a seed-bank, investing instead in contributing to the diversity and function of future ecosystems. This leads to the rousing proposition that a shift in the active/dormant fraction of a microbial population may profoundly affect ecological functioning and elemental cycling. Despite this intriguing connection, we lack fundamental knowledge on the prevalence, triggers and timescales of dormancy, and how these factors affect ecosystems and elemental budgets. I will address this by elucidating the role of microbial dormancy as an ecological and biogeochemical regulator on Earth. The cryosphere provides a unique testing ground to meet my goals. Here, microbes contend with dramatic variations in environmental extremes on timescales ranging from days to thousands of years. Through an innovative data-driven approach involving experiments and modelling, I will: 1) quantify the prevalence of dormancy among taxonomically and functionally diverse microbial communities, 2) identify the triggers and timescales of dormancy, 3) link dormancy to the emergence, survival and evolution of microbial populations and 4) elucidate the role of dormancy as a regulator of biogeochemical cycles. Understanding the interplay between microbial dormancy, ecological processes and biogeochemical cycles holds the key to understanding the co-evolution of life and our planet, and how life excels throughout glacial-interglacial cycles and other global changes.
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: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences biological morphology comparative morphology
- natural sciences biological sciences evolutionary biology
- natural sciences physical sciences astronomy planetary sciences planets
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences physical geography glaciology
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG
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75794 PARIS
France
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