| Vast communities of microbes are found in all ecosystems, from our guts to the deep ocean. These communities are not unstructured ?soups? of cells; instead they are partitioned into populations of organisms with similar genetic composition and specialized in the exploitation of specific resources and opportunities. Up to now, because of the low resolution mapping between whole genome sequences and natural populations, little is understood about how bacterial genome evolution copes with ecological opportunities and limitations in the micro-environment. Over the last five years, bacterial communities found in coastal waters have been established as a model system to produce a detailed mapping between oceanic microenvironments and microbial populations. In this project, I will use the complete genome sequences of those ecologically delineated organisms to study the mechanisms of genome evolution that facilitate their ecological specialization. I will focus on the effect of DNA exchange between these microbes and the role of gene regulation in the adaptation to specific environments. This study will deliver major advances in our understanding of the genetic underpinnings of microbial biodiversity by addressing fundamental biological questions at a scale which is still mostly unexplored. |
