OPUS: CRS: Comparative life history of microbes

This project studies the characteristics of bacteria and other microbes, such as yeast. In recent years, scientists have made great advances in describing how microbes grow on different kinds of food and how they compete with each other. Scientists have also described the many ways in which microbes affect the health of humans and other organisms. However, scientists understand much less about why different microbes have come to be so different in the ways in which they feed, compete with each other, and influence the health of other organisms. The goal of this project is to study the processes in nature that have shaped microbial characteristics. Such understanding from the new research will lead to specific predictions about how microbes are expected to differ when in habitats that have not previously been studied. Those predictions can be tested by the many microbiologists working on these problems, leading to better scientific insight, to more efficient response to challenges, and to improved management of resources. The new work will also provide insight into how human activities will likely alter the biology of these microbial organisms that so strongly affect the environment and the health of ecosystems.<br/><br/>This project will synthesize the investigator?s past theoretical work on fitness and past applications to microbes with the novel challenges posed by recent empirical advances. The project will deliver a series of synthesis articles on microbial life history. Each article will unify the conceptual framework for fitness and evolutionary process with the specific empirical challenges for microbial traits. Individual articles will focus on topics such as metabolism, siderophores, quorum sensing, cross feeding, and exodigestion. The comparative predictions of this synthesis will motivate the next generation of empirical studies to advance the topic beyond its current limitations.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.