Dr Steve Archer1
1Agresearch, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Biography:
Steve Archer is a microbial ecologist who has specialised in the study of extremophilic microorganisms from a range of biomes. He has recently joined AgResearch from AUT where he had developed a programme dedicated to understanding the atmospheric microbiome, primarily through the formation of the Global Atmospheric Microbiome project and his involvement in the NSF-funded BROADN project. Through a scion-led MBIE programme he is currently investigating intercontinental transportation of microorganisms from Australia to New Zealand, and through a University of Canterbury Marsden programme he is investigating the dispersal mechanisms of hyperthermophiles.
Abstract:
The atmospheric microbiome is a dynamic system comprised of regional and distant sources that has been the subject of interest for an increasing number of potential applications. Massive numbers of microorganisms are continually being transported globally, including airborne disease that represents an uncontrollable pathway across borders. Despite an increasing number of studies on the topic, there remains a lack of understanding of the relative contributions from different biomes during transit, and little consensus over which methodology can overcome the technical limitations of this extremely low biomass environment. The importance of robust protocols from sample collection to bioinformatic processing is therefore vital in detecting targeted biological signatures, which is particularly challenging as contaminating and targeted microbiomes often shared close resemblance.
This talk will share the findings and lessons learned through studies conducted over the past several years across diverse biomes globally. Based on microbial species and back trajectory analysis, we were able to identify putative air inputs from non-soil sources, including marine, and global terrestrial environments. Although air samples were weakly regionally connected to climatological conditions, we have found that even in areas with labile surfaces, over two-thirds of reads were not represented by our climatologically diverse soil inventory with some areas having more taxa identified in other locations soils represented in their air samples. These findings build core information useful to predict the dispersal success of all microorganisms involved in useful and detrimental global processes and the framework for future studies.