Jay Lennon, a
Michigan State University (MSU) researcher, will use a $199,000
National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study how bacteria evolve to resist viruses, hoping to unlock information critical to environmental and climate studies.
The NSF funds are part of the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.
Lennon describes what he calls an ages-old evolutionary arms race: The oceans teem with microscopic bacteria that produce much of Earth’s oxygen as they absorb carbon dioxide greenhouse gas. But fast-mutating viruses also populate the seas, attacking marine bacteria.
“Even though (viruses) are important for regulating these (bacteria) populations, we find there’s a lot of rapid evolution that occurs,” says Lennon, an assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics.
In laboratory settings the organisms known as cyanobacteria can take just weeks to evolve resistance to viruses, Lennon says, while viruses similarly mutate to find new ways to infect them.
Cyanobacteria play a vital role in sequestering ocean nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients, during which they remove carbon dioxide from the air and produce oxygen. He hopes to understand how they evolve to resist viruses.
He will work with microbiologist Steven Wilhelm of the
University of Tennessee and biochemist Nathan VerBerkmoes of
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, both funded by other grants.
Other partners include the
Broad Institute at Harvard University and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which will sequence virus genomes for the research project to genetically evaluate how they evolved.
Source: MSU
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation & Jobs editor, may be reached
here.
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.