EAPSI: Investigating the Distribution and Diversity of Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidizing Bacteria in a Geothermal Hot Spring Ecosystem

Lawrence Jennifer E, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will investigate the abundance, distribution, and functional capabilities of anaerobic ammonium oxidizing (anammox) bacteria in a geothermal hot spring ecosystem located on the North Island of New Zealand. Anammox bacteria play an important role in removing reactive nitrogen (i.e., nitrogen species that directly or indirectly support growth) from both natural and engineered ecosystems, but their role in removing reactive nitrogen from geothermal hot spring ecosystems is not well understood. Increased knowledge of anammox bacteria is particularly valuable today, because most of the world's industrialized nations are struggling to manage elevated concentrations of reactive nitrogen in their fresh and marine water bodies. The insights into the distribution and diversity of anammox bacteria gained as a result of this project will help scientists and engineers develop and apply more robust and sustainable reactive nitrogen removal processes. This project will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Wei-Qin Zhuang, a noted expert in environmental microbiology and biotechnology, at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Geothermal hot spring ecosystem samples will be collected from the One Thousand Springs database, which has catalogued the 16S rRNA microbial diversity and associated geochemical conditions of over 1,000 geothermal hot spring ecosystem samples collected from the Taupo Volcanic Zone on New Zealand's North Island. This database will be mined to identify samples that indicate the existence of anammox bacteria. Further analyses will be performed on these samples to elucidate the abundance and functional capabilities of anammox bacteria within these samples. Abundance will be determined through quantitative polymerase chain reaction analyses, and functional capabilities will be determined through metagenomic analyses. Subsequently, these same analyses will be performed on samples extracted from geothermal hot spring enrichment bioreactors operated by the Zhuang Laboratory, in order to understand the impacts of the translation of extremophilic anammox bacteria from a natural ecosystem to an engineered bioreactor. This award, under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program, supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Royal Society of New Zealand.