Abstract:
During the course of my project, I will focus my research on certain metabolic capabilities of microbial colonies. These microbial communities will be derived from deposited sediment and mineral samples from 1 of 3 sites around Lake Kleifarvatn in southwest Iceland. These samples were collected near hydrothermal environments which constantly have microbial communities that work together to evolve geochemical processes in hydrothermal vents and springs. The interpretations of co-evolution of microbial communities and their abiotic environments remain difficult due to disconnected systems and lack of intensive datasets of microbial communities in hydrothermal settings.
In my research, I want to get a better understanding of the relationships between these ever-changing environments and their microbial communities by doing a metagenomic study. From sequencing and metagenomic analysis I would then be able to link metabolic capabilities of the microbial community structure across spatial and developmental gradients. From this data I want to see if there are novel bacteria that would not normally be found through bacterial growth plating. From these bacteria, I would then look at their genes to further follow what kinds of functions and metabolisms they have that contribute to their communties.
Research Objectives and Questions:
The primary objective of this project is to determine what kind of bacteria are in the soil and what kind of relation they have with the community. By performing metagenomics we would be able to see bacteria that we normally are not able to and see how they interact with other microogranisms.
Background:
Hydrothermal environments host microbial communities tightly coupled to local geochemical conditions, and their deposits can preserve organic biosignatures that record past biological diversity and activity (Drake et al., 2014; Djokic et al., 2021; Williams et al., 2021; Millan et al., 2025). Metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) enable culture-independent genomic characterization of bacterial communities in these systems, yet interpreting how communities shift across different feature types and deposit ages remains difficult without co-located genomic and geochemical data spanning a single continuous system. This study addresses that gap by pairing MAG-based bacterial genomic analysis with geochemical data across multiple hydrothermal features and developmental stages.
Methodology:
For this research I will be performing shotgun metagenomics by first extracting DNA from the soil and then sending the DNA to be sequenced. The microbial soil, sediment and mats would already be collected from the post-doctoral fellow who I am conducting the research with. I would continue with protocols of the DNA PowerSoil Pro Kits and make sure there is a substantial amount of DNA concentration which would be measured via Qubit dsDNA HS Assay Kit. This would ensure that I have substantial DNA to send off for Illumina sequencing. From the sequencing reads we will use computer software to trim, assemble (metaSPAdes), and filter the sequence to create contigs. The contigs are filtered to recover high-quality metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs) based on completeness and contamination metrics.
All the assembled contigs will be used as input to a metabolic pathway annotation pipeline developed from other environmental metagenomic studies. Using multiple metabolic profiles among sites and across outflow channels, I will be able to analyze the potential links between gene abundance for sulfur metabolisms and the environmental variables that best correlate.
Potential Impact:
This project will be added to the comprehensive dataset of metagenomics in in situ geochemical and mineralogical data from a natural array of hydrothermal systems. The results of this research will relate to other microbial ecologists in their research of microbial diversity. There has been other research done in other hydrothermal areas such as Yellowstone National Park and Taupo Volcanic Zone which have also worked to identify organisms across differing springs.
Additionally, the metagenomic dataset collected with high sequencing depth would also be a significant addition to the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) database for general microbial research in extreme environments, specifically for Iceland. There are less shotgun metagenomic datasets and this would provide as a new resource for providing high quality deep sequencing to the science community.