Monday, August 13, 2012: 2:00 PM
Meeting Room 9-10, Columbia Hall, Terrace Level (Washington Hilton)
With the availability of complete microbial genome sequences for cultured organisms as well as more complex environmental consortia, systems biology in microbial communities is becoming feasible by interrogating genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolic information. Our current work seeks to develop and demonstrate advanced “shotgun” mass spectrometry techniques for the comprehensive characterization of microbial proteomes. The goal of this research is to enable a detailed glimpse into the functional state and metabolic activities of microbial membership in environmental systems. The approach is based on multidimensional liquid chromatography interfaced on-line with tandem mass spectrometry. Measuring the basis for carbon cycling in terrestrial ecosystems remains central to predicting carbon flow and turn-over in natural environments. Microbial communities are the critical drivers, and shotgun proteomics provide detailed insight into microbial activities at molecular level in natural systems. We have developed a detergent based proteome extraction method which can be combined with high performance LTQ-Orbitrap-Velos measurements to investigate carbon cycling in terrestrial (soils, sediments) as well as aqueous (acid mine drainage, deep sea methane seeps) systems. Particular emphasis has been given to characterization of microbial activities in these cases, in particular for c-type cytochromes, microbial community turn-over, and anaerobic oxidation of methane.
* Research support was provided by the U.S. DOE, Office of Biological and Environmental Research. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed and operated by the University of Tennessee-Battelle, L.L.C. for the U.S. Department of Energy.