About This Project

Interest in characterizing the microbial communities exposed to environmental stressors has been reinvigorated along with their potential for harboring natural products, relevant to human health. Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary includes regions open and closed to fishing. Little is known of impacts such as bottom trawls that disrupt food webs. Harnessing advances in genomics, our study tests whether fishing activity alters sediment microbial diversity.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

The ocean ecosystem covers more than 70% of the Earth's surface and the marine environment harbors a vast unexplored resource of novel natural products. There are microbes with virtually unexplored metabolic diversity that have had 3.5 billion years of mutations to yield exceptional genetic variation. Many exist in sediment surfaces so it is critical to assess the health of the ocean's vital food web. Molecular sequencing and technological advances have revealed a novel “unculturable world” in which the microbial community can be examined directly from environmental samples. Our preliminary results have led our team to further explore whether bacterial biodiversity is compromised where fishing gear activity is allowed.

What is the significance of this project?

There is a major scientific gap in our understanding of the role marine microbes play in ecosystem health and the capability they have to produce medically relevant compounds. Across the vast geographic expanse of the ocean environment, a slight shift in the microbial communities structure can disrupt primary productivity and alter vital biogeochemical cycles that provide nutrients to food webs and mitigate over-fishing and pollution activities. Our study results will enable development of a novel DNA library of microbial species that will inform sustainable fisheries and propel discovery of potentially medically relevant compounds. This is one of the first metagenomics study to map the microbial diversity in The Stellwagen National Marine Sanctuary.

What are the goals of the project?

We will travel to two study areas (circled in map) in the Summer of 2019. Within each area (open and closed to fishing), we will collect a total 18 sediment samples from three different sites which include triplicates. Using a combined metagenomics and bioinformatic workflow we will characterize small genome sized bacterial populations in all samples and classify the groups by site and study area. This approach will produce much needed ecological baseline data on the health of the sediment microhabitat. It will also enable further assessment of a biosynthetic gene cluster library to screen potential natural products (i.e., antibiotic properties) that we have initiated.