We live in a world dominated by prokaryotic (bacteria and archaea) microorganisms. Prokaryotic microorganisms have evolved to solve complex metabolic problems over approximately 4 billion years of evolution, innovating distributed solutions to nutrient and energy conversion processes that have fundamentally transformed the surface chemistry of the earth and generated a deep reservoir of genetic memory integral to the emergence of multicellular life including our own. High-throughput sequencing and mass spectrometry platforms are now transforming our perception of this microcosmos, illuminating microbial dark matter and conceptually linking microorganisms at the individual, population, and community levels of organization to a wider range of ecosystem functions and services including microbiome interactions in cross-scale health and disease.

Working Groups: Biomining, Cyano, Engineered Living Materials, and Lung Microbiome