Excellence in Research: Evaluating Environmental Stressor Effects on Soil Bacterial Traits

The goal of this Excellence in Research (EiR) project is to conduct interdisciplinary, collaborative research to investigate how prior environmental nutrient conditions influence bacterial inter- and intraspecific interactions. Specifically, the research will examine how changes in nutrients alter bacterial traits such as the physical features of forming spores and modifying cell walls and genetic features that are responsible for changes to physical features, antibiotic resistance, and soil nutrient access in the context of microbe-microbe and plant-microbe relationships.

Results from this work are of broad national interests in agricultural, natural resources management and conservation sectors. This work benefits society through research opportunities at the undergraduate and graduate levels and through shared educational content for grades 6-8 at rural public schools. This research will be integrated with the education of undergraduates at Fayetteville State University (FSU), a Historically Black University focusing on the education of African American students, with high female, and military or military-affiliated student populations.

This project will support teaching-research integration capacity through the design, implementation, and assessment of a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) offered at FSU, which will be linked to ongoing CUREs and undergraduate/graduate student-led projects at East Carolina University (ECU). The integration of microbial ecology and biodiversity research will improve the STEM education quality of historically marginalized populations and enhance diversity and training of the STEM workforce.

This research will test the hypothesis that long-term nutrient enrichment will result in more competitive (and less mutualistic) bacterial populations (e.g., increased antimicrobial resistance, increased growth rates) compared to the unfertilized counterparts by focusing on three objectives: 1) examining culturable wetland soil bacteria by trait-based phenotypic analyses to understand how ongoing nutrient enrichment influences bacterial traits that are important for resource acquisition, 2) identifying genotypic differences between bacterial isolates from nutrient-rich vs. nutrient-limited environments using comparative genomic approaches, and 3) examining how previous nutrient conditions influence microbe-microbe and plant-microbe interactions by adding bacterial inocula (from fertilized or unfertilized soils) to a wetland grass exposed to a fertilization gradient. The Fayetteville State University and East Carolina University teams will collaboratively conduct comparative genomics and functional lab-based assays.

Evaluating bacterial traits in an ecological context will expand our understanding of how resource limitation influences soil microbial trait diversity with consequences for promoting beneficial plant-microbe interactions in agriculture and restoration. Collectively, this research will provide participants the opportunity to generate new knowledge, establish and refine critical thinking skills, and enhance the overall competitiveness of students entering graduate and/or professional school as well as the workforce.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.