Project: A systems biology approach of diatom response to ocean acidification and climate change

Description from the NSF award abstract:
Advances in systems biology enable new approaches to understand the carbon cycle and carbon sequestration research across different scales of organization, linking single cells to ecosystems, with broad impacts. Systems biology is a robust, holistic, hypothesis-driven, quantitative, integrative and iterative discipline that enables comprehensive understanding of model organisms by utilizing genomic and computational tools that provide the power for linking gene expression, phenotype, and the environment. In a systems approach, cells are studied as an integrated whole to explain the overall response and dynamic change in the full spectrum of molecules (DNA, RNA proteins and metabolites), and their relationships (biological networks). The publication of the genome of T. pseudonana allows a universal analysis and understanding of the regulation of primary production of diatoms in response to ocean acidification and climate change. Global understanding of the mechanisms of regulation of carbon fixation by diatoms is now possible. This project will focus on characterizing - at molecular and cellular levels using a systems approach - the response of diatoms to ocean acidification and climate change, essential to understanding the future of the ocean's "biological pump". The broader goal of this project is to understand the contribution by diatoms to carbon cycling at a biogeochemical level. This project will generate a model of the global expression of all genes in the diatom T. pseudonana and will enable us to anticipate how higher CO2 and temperatures, lower pH will affect the ability of diatoms to sequester carbon in the oceans.