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- Organische Geochemie
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- Hinrichs Lab - PoLiMar
Hinrichs Lab - PoLiMar
PoLiMar: Microbial lipids in marine sediments and their significance for subsurface life
| Duration: | July 2010 - June 2012 (Project LI 1901/1-1) October 2009 - June 2012 (Project HI 616/10-1) |
| Funding: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (Project HI 616/10-1 and LI 1901/1-1) |
| Principal Investigator(s): | Kai-Uwe Hinrichs, Julius Lipp |
| Involved scientists in the Hinrichs Lab: | Julius Lipp, Marcos Yoshinaga |
| Partners: |
Abstract
Intact polar membrane lipids (IPLs) are ubiquitous trace compounds in marine sediments and are considered diagnostic markers for live microbial cells. The dominance of a particular group of IPLs, glycosidic archaeal di- and tetraethers, suggests that Archaea constitute a major fraction of microbial biomass in the deep subseafloor (Lipp et al., Nature 454, 991-994, 2008). A significant relationship was observed between concentrations of IPLs and total organic carbon. We suggested that this relationship captures a fundamental property of the marine sedimentary biosphere and can be used to estimate quantities of biomass.
However, our current data set is still strongly biased towards sediments in eutrophic parts of the ocean. With this project we aim to extend our environmental survey to a truly globally representative data set that includes diverse open-ocean environments and complements existing and corresponding data sets based on concentrations of bulk cells. We want to constrain the factors that control the distribution of microbial biomass in marine sediments. Additional experimental investigations focus on the environmental persistence of the major IPL classes and study the potential existence of a fossil fraction of sedimentary IPLs. We also examine the relationship between growth conditions and IPL composition in selected Archaea in order to understand the dominance of glycosidic ether lipids in marine subsurface sediments. With this project we hope to improve our understanding of the sedimentary biosphere, its global extent and broad taxonomic composition, and advance technologies for the detection of microbial biomass in complex environmental samples.
Intact polar membrane lipids (IPLs) are ubiquitous trace compounds in marine sediments and are considered diagnostic markers for live microbial cells. The dominance of a particular group of IPLs, glycosidic archaeal di- and tetraethers, suggests that Archaea constitute a major fraction of microbial biomass in the deep subseafloor (Lipp et al., Nature 454, 991-994, 2008). A significant relationship was observed between concentrations of IPLs and total organic carbon. We suggested that this relationship captures a fundamental property of the marine sedimentary biosphere and can be used to estimate quantities of biomass.
However, our current data set is still strongly biased towards sediments in eutrophic parts of the ocean. With this project we aim to extend our environmental survey to a truly globally representative data set that includes diverse open-ocean environments and complements existing and corresponding data sets based on concentrations of bulk cells. We want to constrain the factors that control the distribution of microbial biomass in marine sediments. Additional experimental investigations focus on the environmental persistence of the major IPL classes and study the potential existence of a fossil fraction of sedimentary IPLs. We also examine the relationship between growth conditions and IPL composition in selected Archaea in order to understand the dominance of glycosidic ether lipids in marine subsurface sediments. With this project we hope to improve our understanding of the sedimentary biosphere, its global extent and broad taxonomic composition, and advance technologies for the detection of microbial biomass in complex environmental samples.