{"id":301,"date":"2015-12-28T02:09:22","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T02:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.99.100:8080\/award\/investigation-of-genetic-exchange-within-and-between-rock-hosted-biofilms-fueled-by-serpentinization\/"},"modified":"2016-10-14T19:07:18","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T19:07:18","slug":"investigation-of-genetic-exchange-within-and-between-rock-hosted-biofilms-fueled-by-serpentinization","status":"publish","type":"award","link":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/award\/investigation-of-genetic-exchange-within-and-between-rock-hosted-biofilms-fueled-by-serpentinization\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigation of genetic exchange within and between rock-hosted biofilms fueled by serpentinization"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Genomic investigations of deep biosphere ecosystems have the potential for yielding ground-breaking\u00a0insights into microbial evolution, but explicitly evolutionary studies are currently limited by technical\u00a0constraints of environmental sequencing approaches and by the lack of a diverse collection of cultivated\u00a0model organisms representing subsurface ecosystems (Biddle et al., 2012). This project aimed to study\u00a0genome evolution in archaeal biofilms inhabiting carbonate chimneys of the Lost City hydrothermal field.\u00a0The extremely high abundance and low diversity of these biofilms makes them attractive natural models\u00a0for the study of genome evolution in deep biosphere habitats. The genomic characteristics of this unusual\u00a0population structure have not yet been explored, so we began to optimize methods for the extraction and\u00a0sorting of single cells from Lost City chimney biofilms in order to analyze single-cell genomic variability\u00a0within and between biofilm communities. Our preliminary results indicated that enzymatic digestion of\u00a0the biofilm extracellular matrix improves recovery of cells compared to typical cell extraction procedures\u00a0that only utilize physical disruption of samples during cell extraction. We also developed a flow\u00a0cytometric approach to evaluate the results of cell extraction procedures prior to investing resources into\u00a0sorting and sequencing of single cells. Future data resulting from these efforts will allow us to pursue our\u00a0broader goals of measuring the extent of genetic exchange between cells, viruses, and extracellular DNA\u00a0in this rock-hosted, deep biosphere habitat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":[],"award_type":[11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/awards\/301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/awards"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/award"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"award_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/award_type?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}