Project information
Project manager
Mark Dopson
Other project members
Nicolo Ivanovich, Linnaeus University, Stefan Bertilsson and Maliheh Mehrshad, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Participating organisations
Linnaeus University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Funder
Carl Tryggers Stiftelse
Timetable
2025-08-11 to 2027-06-10
Subject
Ecology (Department of Biology of Environmental Science, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences)
Research group
Systems Biology of Microorganisms
Linnaeus University Centre (Lnuc)
Linnaeus University Centre for the Environment (CENWIN), Linnaeus University Centre for Ecology and Evolution in Microbial model Systems (EEMiS)
Knowledge Environment
Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Water
More about the project
The deep terrestrial biosphere is the life below the land’s surface that contains active bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes plus viruses. This life is estimated to comprise 12-20% of the total biomass on Earth and plays a significant role in global carbon and energy cycles. However, due to its size and the difficulty of obtaining samples, it is one of the least understood zones on earth.
The applicants have previously built the largest collection of deep biosphere DNA sequencing data to develop an understanding of terrestrial deep biosphere groundwaters of contrasting ages and origins. In this study, we will use long-read DNA sequencing (giving sequences of 1000s of nucleotides long) obtained to a previously unimaginable sequencing depth. This long-read approach has the great advantage of allowing the reconstruction of (near) complete genomes of all the species in the groundwaters. This further allows hypotheses on adaptations to the low carbon and energy environment to be tested that could not be previously addressed.
This state-of-the-art study will answer fundamental questions for life on earth, the potential life on other planets, as well as having valuable implications for anthropogenic activities including the availability of freshwater and carbon capture and storage.
The project is part of the research within the research group Systems Biology of Microorganisms, the Linnaeus University Centre for the Environment (CENWIN) and Linnaeus University Centre for Ecology and Evolution in Microbial model Systems (EEMiS) and the Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Water.
