Ass. Prof. A. MURAT EREN: Teas­ing apart evol­u­tion­ary pro­cesses that shape SAR11 biogeo­graphy

Abstract

The as­ton­ish­ing di­versity of SAR11 in mar­ine hab­it­ats chal­lenges not only emer­ging op­er­a­tional bound­ar­ies defined for mi­cro­bial 'spe­cies' but also state-of-the-art strategies to study mi­cro­bial pop­u­la­tion ge­net­ics. With its ubi­quity in sur­face sea­wa­ter samples, ex­tens­ive di­versity in se­quence space, and unique evol­u­tion­ary his­tory, SAR11 is one of the most ex­cit­ing puzzles of con­tem­por­ary mi­cro­bi­o­logy. In this sem­inar I will de­scribe our re­cent at­tempts to in­teg­rate mul­tiple 'om­ics strategies and ana­lyt­ical ap­proaches to take a deeper look into the eco­lo­gical and evol­u­tion­ary forces that main­tain the ge­n­omic het­ero­gen­eity of cos­mo­pol­itan mi­cro­bial pop­u­la­tions. While our find­ings sug­gest en­vir­on­ment­ally-me­di­ated se­lec­tion as the main driver of SAR11 di­versity and biogeo­graphy, the new ap­proaches that emerge from our in­vest­ig­a­tion, such as map­ping en­vir­on­mental ge­netic het­ero­gen­eity to pre­dicted pro­tein struc­tures, brings us closer to un­der­stand­ing de­term­in­ants of fit­ness at res­ol­u­tions that mat­ter.