The protection and conservation of ocean habitats hinges on our understanding of the role marine microbes play in maintaining ecosystem health in the face of environmental change. One strategy towards defining these roles is to leverage ‘omics’ technologies to capture microbial responses to changes in their environment. In this talk, I will highlight our work focused on leveraging emerging ‘-omics’ techniques to undercovering the hidden role of marine microbes across coastal habitats. First, I will provide insights from our ‘omic observations that allowed us to show that sucrose is piling up to mM concentrations underneath seagrass meadows. Specifically, we used a combination of metagenomic, metatranscriptomic and metabolomic analyses, and in situ incubation experiments, to show that sucrose persists in Posidonia oceanica rhizospheres because aromatic-rich dissolved organic matter (DOM) produced by the seagrass inhibits microbial metabolism under low oxygen conditions. I will then outline our current approach towards leveraging ‘omics methods to determine microbial function with host-associated microbiomes. Overall, our work demonstrates the power of ‘omic analysis in furthering our understanding of microbial ecosystem dynamics across ocean regions. 

Primary Presenter: Maggie Sogin, University of California at Merced (esogin@ucmerced.edu)

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