The first University of �鶹��ý Program—integrating human and veterinary medicine and environmental science—graduates accepted their certificates at the UH Mānoa Commencement Ceremony on May 17. The inaugural One Health certificate recipients were molecular biosciences and biotechnology major Braxton Ramos, and biology major Zarek Kon.

Ramos conducted her capstone research project, “Effect of Environmental Selenium on Microbial Diversity in Culex quinquefasciatus” under the mentorship of Associate Researcher Lucia Seale and Associate Professor Matthew Medeiros at the Pacific Biosciences Research Center. Her study focused on an important symbiotic gut fungus, and aims to profile microbial diversity of the gut microbiome in the presence of increased selenium. Ramos plans to continue her training after graduation to become a physician’s assistant.

Kon’s capstone research project, “Environmental Surveillance of Leptospira in �鶹��ý: Evaluating DNA Extraction Methods for Soil and Water Samples” was mentored by Assistant Professor Jourdan McMillan and Professor Sandra Chang at the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM). His findings demonstrated that commercial DNA extraction kits can successfully identify pathogenic Leptospira in environmental samples. Kon will enter JABSOM as a first-year medical student in fall 2025.

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More on the certificate

The prepares students with the skills and knowledge to work collaboratively across disciplines to solve real-world problems.

The One Health certificate will benefit students pursuing a wide range of professions in human, animal or environmental health. Besides specific jobs in these areas, other One Health-related careers include science writing, food safety, disaster preparedness, global disease surveillance, policy and sustainability practices.

A national center of excellence at the is doing much more than groundbreaking biomedical research. The (ICEMHH) is building infrastructure and capacity to better �鶹��ý’s human, environmental and economic health.

“We’re designated a center of excellence for microbiome research. It means that people are really looking to �鶹��ý to make the next vanguard discoveries in this field,” said Principal Investigator Anthony Amend, a professor with the . “We’re making incredible discoveries about microbiomes—symbiotic microbes, things like bacteria, fungi, viruses that are inside living hosts, including us—and this underpins life on Earth as we know it.”

Utilizing two grants from the National Institutes of Health (COBRE) totaling more than $21 million, ICEMHH has also developed three state-of-the-art “cores”—an insectary, a microbial genomics laboratory and a microscopy imaging center—for cross-disciplinary public impact research beyond how microbiomes impact human health.

Fruit flies, mosquitos, related diseases

The Insectary for Scientific Training and Advances in Research or InSTAR promotes research on insect microbiomes (the microorganisms of a particular site or habitat) and advanced research in medical entomology (study of insects). It offers insect-rearing equipment and services, a collaborative lab and rearing space, insect containment, and other training and insect-management services.

Amend said, “Users of this core include some of our researchers here at the university and state agencies that are trying to understand disease—how it spreads in our state and how to mitigate those risks.”

Some of those mosquito-carried diseases include zika, dengue fever and malaria.

DNA sequencing, genetic analysis

The Microbial Genomics and Analytical Laboratory or MGAL houses the necessary instrumentation to provide a wide variety of services, such as high-throughput DNA/RNA extractions (to examine molecules that make up our genomes, and to generate “barcodes” for identifying microbes), amplicon library preparation (a highly targeted approach that enables researchers to analyze genetic variation in specific genomic regions), natural product and small molecule analysis, and culturing and storage of microbial strains.

“What this core does is enable somebody to come in with a sample of an animal or a soil sample or any sort of environmental sample. They can bring it to the core, drop it off and in a matter of weeks come out with a list and a figure of all of the microbes and their genomes that are within that sample,” Amend said. “This has really revolutionized our ability to determine ecological processes that are happening on microscales.”

Photons, electrons, more in high resolution

The Microscopy Imaging Center for Research through Observation or MICRO provides researchers with state-of-the-art instrumentation, training and services for high-resolution scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, optical, fluorescence, laser scanning confocal microscopy and image analysis.

“You can look at photons. You can look at electrons—all these different tools to study microbes in their host environments,” Amend said.

The three research cores have already attracted a wide variety of users.

“We host researchers from all over the world, who come to learn about microbes, to use our facilities and to take that knowledge back to their countries, to develop their own expertise,” Amend said.

At the other end of the spectrum, there was the gentleman who walked in off the street and wanted to know which microbes were in his sourdough starter—which he thought made the most delicious bread and helped to keep his skin clear. In a matter of weeks the MGAL facility had a list of all the beneficial bacteria and yeasts contained in that flour and water sample.

Sustaining excellence

COBRE grants are awarded in three sequential five-year phases.

• Phase 1 awards build capacity in an area of biomedical research through the establishment of a center of excellence that helps develop a critical mass of investigators who are able to compete effectively for independent research funding and improve infrastructure in the center’s research area. Researchers in UH’s Phase 1 $10.4-million grant generated almost $22 million in extramural funding.
• Phase 2 awards strengthen successful COBRE Phase 1 centers through continued development of investigators to compete effectively for independent research, pilot project funding and further improvements to research infrastructure at the institution. Improving the three research cores is a focus of UH’s $10.7-million Phase 2 grant.
• Phase 3 awards provide support for maintaining research cores developed during Phases 1 and 2 to sustain a collaborative, multidisciplinary research environment with pilot project programs, mentoring and training components.

�鶹��ýwill be applying for a Phase 3 award to sustain its world-class microbiome research and three research cores. According to Amend, the center is accelerating many kinds of projects that people care about.

He said, “We hope that by launching this center of excellence and by maintaining these three cores, it puts �鶹��ý at the forefront of this research where we can make these discoveries to promote our own livelihoods, economic opportunities and sustainability going into the future.”

—by Kelli Abe Trifonovitch

Small invertebrates and microfauna, such as endangered Hawaiian picture-winged flies, play an important role in providing balance to natural ecosystems.

Scientists at the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa and the �鶹��ý State Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) Division of Forestry and Wildlife are working together to re-establish picture-winged fly populations, including Drosophila hemipeza, an endangered species. The project’s aim is to help restore ecosystem stability, support natural biodiversity, and reduce the likelihood of the species’ extinction.

Historically, picture-winged fly populations were found at multiple sites in both the Koʻolau and Waiʻanae mountain ranges of Oʻahu. Today, population numbers have greatly diminished, and their range has been significantly reduced. It is believed that Palikea, in the Waiʻanae Range, may be the only remaining site for these flies, where few are left.

“Contributing factors to their decline include a range of issues that a lot of other native insects face: deforestation, predation and competition from invasives, native host plant destruction from pigs, and climate change,” said Kelli Konicek, entomological research technician with the �鶹��ý Invertebrate Program.

In conservation efforts, small invertebrates and microfauna often receive less attention than their larger animal counterparts, but their role in supporting biodiversity and ecosystem health is critical. By conserving endangered species such as the Hawaiian picture-winged fly, DLNR and UH are aiming to create holistic, restored ecosystems.

Improving fly fitness

The researchers are working to stem that tide, rearing D. hemipeza in a lab to introduce into the wild. Through experimentation and ingenuity working with more common and abundant fly species, and leveraging long-term knowledge developed by UH Mānoa researchers at the Hawaiian Drosophila Research Stock Center, the team developed an effective mass rearing regimen that has proven very effective.

“In the lab, we are trying different methods involving the microbiome to improve reproduction and to understand how a switch from a controlled lab diet and environment to field conditions may impact the flies,” said Joanne Yew, a researcher at the (PBRC) in the UH Mānoa and Konicek’s research mentor. “In our experiments, we provide microbe supplements, either from native host plants or from other Hawaiian Drosophila, to developing flies and assess the impact on physiological changes such as egg number and number of offspring.”

The flies are raised in the UH Mānoa , a facility led and managed by a team of PBRC researchers and faculty. Incorporating microbe supplements, the group hopes to ensure the reared flies are fit and healthy enough to be introduced into nature.

Successful reproduction

The team is slowly releasing these flies at a Mānoa Cliff Restoration site, containing several native host plant species in which D. hemipeza are known to breed. Native ʻōhā wai, hāhā and ōpuhe have been planted by a dedicated group of volunteers in cooperation with the Division of Forestry and Wildlife’s Plant Extinction Prevention Program.

Scientists began releasing D. hemipeza in October 2022, and by early January, Konicek observed the first unmarked D. hemipeza at the site, a sign that the species is successfully reproducing on its own.

“It’s really promising to observe flies at the site that we know are not lab-reared,” said DLNR Entomologist Cynthia King. “However, we’ll need to continue the introductions to increase the likelihood the species will establish in the long-term.”

“There is a constant exchange of signals between animals and the microbes in their gut,” said Yew. “What we’re learning from the Hawaiian flies is that the microbiome can have large effects on host reproduction and behavior. Studying the Hawaiian Drosophila and their relationship with their gut microbes will allow us to understand how this sort of inter-kingdom chemical communication shapes the physiology of their host and may influence evolution.”

Prior to joining the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa (SOEST), Sofia Suesue was pursuing an associate’s degree in natural sciences at and enrolled in a summer oceanography course at UH Mānoa, Halau Ola Honua’s Mauka to Makai, that focused on the management of watersheds on Oʻahu.

“Through the Mauka to Makai course, I became more interested in studying oceanography and found pursuing a career in research to be a more possible aspiration than I originally thought,” said Suesue. “Also, with my experience in the course I believed I could utilize what I would learn [in GES] to one day help with some of the environmental issues in our coastal areas.”

Raised on the windward side of Oʻahu, environmental science had always intrigued Suesue. Michael Guidry, summer course co-coordinator and director of the (GES) program, encouraged her to transfer to SOEST after graduating from Windward CC.

Caffeine, herbicide, antibiotic pollution of watershed microbes

After joining the GES bachelor’s degree program in the she focused her senior thesis research on the potential impacts of pollutants—including caffeine, the herbicide glyphosate and the broad-spectrum antibiotic sulfamethoxazole which is used to treat infections—on microbial communities in stream and coastal environments.

Suesue surveyed the Kahaluʻu-ʻĀhuimanu stream system on the windward side of Oʻahu to measure how the concentration of the three contaminants changed from inland to coastal environments. She was guided by (SOEST) mentors Henrietta Dulai, professor, and Craig Nelson, associate researcher in the Department of Oceanography and .

Her findings suggest that caffeine degrades in concentration from the inland portion of the stream to the nearshore and it may have an impact on microbial metabolism. Her research also showed that glyphosate and sulfamethoxazole were stable in both marine and freshwater systems with higher concentrations in nearshore sections of the stream, suggesting they can be delivered into coastal areas where they may persist.

“Observing potential pollutant attenuation by microbes only within inland, non-channelized portions of the stream system suggests that inputs from all other areas may be more likely to export into coastal waters which could lead to the increased occurrence of environmental and public health concerns connected to pollutant presence,” said Suesue.

Testing microbes’ response to contaminants

After this survey, the researchers selected four sites across the stream system and two within Kāneʻohe Bay. They conducted a lab experiment wherein they added contaminants to the water samples collected from these areas and observed changes in the contaminant concentration and microbial density over the course of two weeks.

“If we observe a decrease in contaminant concentration and significantly higher cell density, that may suggest that a contaminant was being used as an energy source for microbes,” said Suesue. “This is what we observed in the samples to which we added caffeine. It appears that it may have an impact on microbial metabolism in that system.”

The team was struck by how persistent all three compounds were in marine ecosystems, remarking that “these experiments add to the growing concern over the long-term persistence of chemicals associated with human pollution sources.”

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–By Marcie Grabowski

The keys to saving endangered species and improving the ecology of our communities may be found in thousands of microbiomes and microbes examined by researchers from the ocean to the summit of the Waimea Valley watershed on Oʻahu.

A team of researchers at the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa (SOEST) conducted this monumental field expedition by sampling more than 3,000 microbes and microbiomes from the ocean of Waimea Bay to the deepest part of Waimea Valley. Their investigation revealed three key discoveries: microbes follow the food web, most of the microbial diversity in a watershed is maintained within the soil and stream water and the local distribution of a microbe predicts how it is distributed globally. Their findings were published recently in the .

Plants and animals are each host to anywhere from dozens to thousands of different microbes, collectively known as microbiomes. They metabolize our food, detoxify contaminants and help fight off disease. Microbes also occupy every habitat around us, but most microbiomes of plants and animals are not present at birth and are acquired. Researchers analyzed where plants and animals acquire microbiomes and where microbes live outside of their hosts.

“Bioblitz” of wide variety of samples

The research team conducted a microbiome “bioblitz”—a near complete census of all environmental substrates and possible hosts to microbes within the watershed. They took more than 3,000 samples from the wet summit of Puʻu Kainapuaʻa, the low floodplain of Waimea Valley and even the clear waters of Waimea Bay. Researchers gathered samples from soil; stream and sea water; animals, including rats, crayfish, mosquitoes and sea urchins; and plants, including trees, ferns and algae; and much more. They extracted and sequenced more than 800 million microbial DNA “barcodes,” to determine which microbes were present where.

“Understanding sources of shared microbial diversity in ecosystems allows us to better understand the origins and assembly processes of symbiotic microbes and their role in preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services,” said Anthony Amend, lead author of the study and associate professor in (PBRC). “If we want to restore native plants and animals to an area, we may need to think about restoring the source environments for their microbiomes as well. Microbes are yet another way that organisms are connected to the environment.”

Key findings

When the team assessed where the largest diversity of microbes was found and where there were fewer species, the structure followed the food web—many types in soil and water, fewer in plants and fewer still in animals.

“Further, microbes that were found in animals tended to be a subset of the microbes associated with plants and the microbes on plants tended to be a subset of the microbes in soil, water, and sediment,” said Sean Swift, study co-author and doctoral student in the UH Mānoa . “It’s as if plants assemble their microbiome from the environment and then animals select their microbiome from that of plants. Microbiomes of organisms are generally subsets of those that are lower on the food chain.”

One obvious means of assembling a microbiome is to acquire microbes from a related host—as a human mother shares her microbiome with an infant, for example.

“However, this model is insufficient to sustain microbiomes across a dynamic landscape,” said Nicole Hynson, associate professor in PBRC at SOEST. “Many plants and animals are sparse, seasonal or ephemeral, requiring that their symbiotic microbes be capable of residing at times in alternate nearby hosts or environments. We found that soil, sediment and water serve as reservoirs for microbial diversity—providing environmental waiting rooms for microbes to colonize hosts when they are available.”

Another key finding is that the local distribution of a microbial species predicts its global distribution.

“Microbes that occur in only one or two organisms or environments in Waimea Valley are unlikely to be widespread globally,” said Craig Nelson, co-author and associate research professor in the Daniel K. Inouye and . “Some microbes were widespread in Waimea and are presumably adaptable to all sorts of hosts and habitats. Our analyses demonstrated that those generalist microbes were also most widely recovered from diverse habitats across the globe.”

The recent work shines light on the diversity and distribution of microbiomes at a landscape scale, an approach made possible by the unique structure and habitat diversity of Hawaiian watersheds.

The UH Mānoa research team included experts from SOEST, , and .

UH Mānoa research team members:

• Anthony S. Amend—PBRC in SOEST and botany in School of Life Sciences
• Sean O. I. Swift—Marine Biology Graduate Program
• John L. Darcy—botany
• Mahdi Belcaid—�鶹��ý Institute of Marine Biology and Department of Information and Computer Sciences
• Craig E. Nelson—Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education and �鶹��ý Sea Grant
• Nicolas Cetraro—PBRC
• Kiana Frank—PBRC
• Kacie Kajihara—PBRC
• Terrance G. McDermot—PBRC
• Margaret McFall-Ngai—PBRC
• Matthew Medeiros—PBRC
• Camilo Mora—College of Social Sciences
• Kirsten K. Nakayama—PBRC
• Nhu H. Nguyen—College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources
• Randi L. Rollins—zoology in School of Life Sciences
• Peter Sadowski—Department of Information and Computer Sciences
• Wesley Sparagon—Marine Biology Graduate Program
• Melisandre A. Tefit—PBRC
• Joanne Y. Yew—PBRC
• Danyel Yogi—PBRC
• Nicole A. Hynson—PBRC

The negative effects of food preservatives on the mouth microbiome (the collection of all microbes, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses and their genes, that naturally live inside and on human bodies), are shown through a study by students.

Their research highlights a significant and almost immediate impact, with a 26–31% decrease in viable bacteria with less than 10 minutes of exposure to sulfite preservatives, and was published in .

“Our recent study showed the effects of two types of sulfite preservatives on the composition of the human mouth microbiome (based on saliva samples). This was the first published study that we are aware of to look at food preservative’s effects on the mouth microbiome,” said UH Maui College Professor Sally Irwin, who is also an adjunct professor with the UH Mānoa John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM). “We feel that this is significant because other research has shown the connections between changes in the mouth microbiome and changes in the gut and connections to several human diseases.”

The study concluded that sulfite preservatives (at concentrations regarded as safe by the FDA) alter the abundance and richness of the microbiota found in saliva and decrease the number of viable bacteria.

“This endeavor has changed my life for the better by giving me more confidence to pursue a career in science.”
—Luz Maria Deardorff

The research project started in 2018 with UH Maui College students Racheal Kent, Francesca Yadao and Luz Maria Deardorff, and required about 18 months of developing techniques and optimizing protocols followed by extensive experimentation and data analysis. Faculty involved in the study included Peter Fisher, Michelle Gould, Junnie June and Irwin.

In April, Deardorff, who is now at UH Mānoa studying biological sciences, presented the team’s research at JABSOM and later at a chapter meeting of the American Microbiology Society.

“This research opportunity strengthened my understanding of the scientific method and nuances in conducting experiments. It has provided me with expertise in working in a laboratory that puts me a step ahead of my peers,” Deardorff said. “This endeavor has changed my life for the better by giving me more confidence to pursue a career in science and providing me with a science ʻohana with my research associates and mentors.”

The project was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences and .

Irwin said, “We feel it’s important for consumers to be aware of the potential negative effects of [sulfites] and other food additives on their mouth and gut microbiomes and to avoid them as much as possible, and rely more on fresh, not processed, foods.”

Bacteria alter their swimming patterns when they get into tight spaces—hurrying to escape from confinement, according to a by researchers at the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa.

Nearly all organisms host bacteria that live symbiotically on or within their bodies. The Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, forms an exclusive symbiotic relationship with the marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri, which has a whip-like tail that it uses to swim to specific places in the squid’s body.

A research team, led by Jonathan Lynch, who was a postdoctoral fellow at the at the UH Mānoa , designed controlled chambers in which they could observe the Vibrio bacteria swimming. Using microscopy, the team discovered that as the bacteria moved between open areas and tight spaces they swam differently.

In open spaces, without chemicals to be attracted to or repelled from, bacteria appeared to meander with no discernible pattern—changing direction randomly and at different points in time. Upon entry into confined spaces, the bacteria straightened their swimming paths to escape from confinement.

“This finding was quite surprising,” said Lynch, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. “At first, we were looking for how bacterial cells changed the shape of their tails when they moved into tight spaces, but discovered that we were having trouble actually finding cells in the tight spaces. After looking more closely, we figured out that it was because the bacteria were actively swimming out of the tight spaces, which we did not expect.”

Navigating a complex environment

The relationship between the squid and this bacterium is a useful model of how bacteria live with other animals, such as the human microbiome. Microbes often traverse complicated routes, sometimes squeezing through tight spaces in tissues, before colonizing preferred sites in their host organism. A variety of chemicals and nutrients within hosts are known to guide bacteria toward their eventual destination. However, less is known about how physical features like walls, corners and tight spaces affect bacterial swimming, despite the fact that these physical features are found across many bacteria-animal relationships.

“Our findings demonstrate that tight spaces may serve as an additional, crucial cue for bacteria while they navigate complex environments to enter specific habitats,” said Lynch. “Changing swimming patterns in tight spaces may allow some bacteria to quickly swim through the tight spaces to get to the other side, but for the others, they turn around before they get stuck—kind of like choosing whether to run across a rickety bridge or turn around before you go too far.”

In the future, the researchers hope to figure out how these bacteria are changing their swimming activity, as well as determining if other bacteria show the same behaviors.

This work was funded by the UH , the Ford Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

This research is an example of UH ��ā�ԴDz�’s goal of (PDF), one of four goals identified in the (PDF), updated in December 2020.

–By Marcie Grabowski

Microbes may be small, but they are highly impactful to environmental and human health amid a changing climate. The (ASM) issued a new report, , co-authored by David Karl, a University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa oceanographer, and more than 30 experts from diverse disciplines, illuminating how microbes can help us adapt to climate change.

As major drivers of elemental cycles and producers and consumers of three of the gases responsible for 98% of increased global warming (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide), microbes have a pivotal impact on climate change and are, in turn, impacted by it. To fully understand how to adapt to climate change, it is critical to learn how our changing climate will impact microbes and how they relate to humans and the environment.

“It has been said that the very great is achieved by the very small,” said Karl. “Micobes matter!” Since 1988 Karl and his colleagues have been tracking changes in the ecology of marine microbes in response to climate change at UH‘s deep sea observatory, .

This report is the outcome of ASM’s November 2021 colloquium meeting, which brought together more than 30 experts from diverse disciplines and sectors who provided multifaceted perspectives and insights. The American Academy of Microbiology, the honorific leadership group and think tank within ASM, convened the colloquium.

Karl, who is also the director of the in UH ��ā�ԴDz�’s (SOEST), was a key participant in the colloquium and contributed to the report. He was also an author on the companion paper, , published this week in mBio. The mBio paper builds on concepts discussed at the November colloquium meeting and provides an extended view and opinions on research needed to fill in the knowledge gaps.

The microbial sciences can provide us with invaluable insights in how to adapt to climate change and its cascading effects. From developing alternative fuels to preventing the spread of pathogens, the applications of microbes are vast and far-reaching. The report details major recommendations for researchers, policymakers and regulators.

Key report recommendations:

• Emphasize interdisciplinary research focused on understanding how microbial activities and metabolic flux alter as climate, precipitation and temperatures change globally.
• Provide guidance for experimental design and data collection for studying microbial communities that allows for data comparison across diverse and global ecosystems.
• Incorporate existing data about microbial diversity and activity on consuming and producing greenhouse gases into Earth-climate models to improve the current and predictive performance of models.
• Increase research investments to generate knowledge and awareness of the contribution of microbes to the generation and consumption of warming gases; incorporate these findings into evidence-based policy and regulatory strategies to address climate change.
• Deploy increased surveillance and detection of zoonotic and vector-borne diseases in animals and humans, including through next generation sequencing technologies, and incorporate a One Health approach to addressing climate changes’ effects on humans, animals and our environment.

This research is an example of UH ��ā�ԴDz�’s goal of (PDF) and (PDF), two of four goals identified in the (PDF), updated in December 2020.

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The coexistence of diverse microbes in the open ocean is made possible by staggering the timing of nutrient uptake, according to a study published in by a group of researchers from 13 institutions, including the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa.

Microorganisms are highly abundant on the ocean surface, reaching densities exceeding a billion organisms per liter. Collectively responsible for roughly half of global photosynthesis, various groups of microbes coexist while relying on limited nutrients, such as nitrogen and iron. Scientists have been puzzled about how this robust population of ocean microbes persists through relentless competition for scarce nutrients.

“This study shows the true strength of scientific collaboration where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” said Dave Karl, co-director of the ’s (SCOPE) based in the UH Mānoa (SOEST). “By bringing experts from different subdisciplines to work together we can address complex and challenging ecological questions that no one investigator or laboratory would be able to achieve.”

• See more UH News stories on SCOPE

A deep dive into microbial metabolism

The research team was led by Joshua Weitz, a professor at Georgia Tech. The study began in 2015 with scientists in SCOPE sailing to the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Earth’s largest stretch of contiguous ocean, aboard the UH research vessel Kilo Moana. The research cruise ultimately yielded data on more than 65,000 unique genetic transcripts, metabolic markers and macromolecules over time in multiple types of organisms.

By integrating data on the timing of metabolic processes of different microbes in the surface ocean throughout the 24-hour light cycle—from the transcription of genes for metabolic proteins to the synthesis of compounds such as lipids—the researchers discovered that the coexistence of diverse microbes is shaped by the timing of uptake.

“The pressing matter of survival for many microorganisms at the surface is acquiring enough nitrogen,” said Daniel Muratore, a doctoral candidate in Quantitative Biosciences at Georgia Tech and one of three co-first authors of the study. “Since microbes need to acquire nitrogen to function, we might imagine that the particular microbial type that is best at acquiring nitrogen will ultimately win—because it’ll be able to grow faster than everything else. And yet that’s not the case.”

Interestingly, nitrogen uptake and assimilation had some of the most distributed timing throughout the day—with various groups doing similar metabolic processes at different times. Transcription of genes associated with iron uptake, another scarce resource in the open ocean, also took place at different times across species.

With staggered nitrogen uptake, Muratore points out that “instead of having to compete with the whole field, [microbes] only have to compete with the organisms that share that specific shift with them. Perhaps that’s one way that the competition is alleviated and can facilitate all of these diverse microbes being able to live off of the same nutrient source.”

“Furthermore, this new information on the coordinated activities of microbial communities may help us to better understand and anticipate changes that might occur as climate changes begin to impact, and perhaps disrupt, the normal functioning of microbial life in the sea,” said Karl.

This research is an example of UH ��ā�ԴDz�’s goal of (PDF), one of four goals identified in the (PDF), updated in December 2020.

This is one of several major projects that are currently underway in SCOPE.

World-renowned microbiome research at the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa received a major boost by the .

The five-year, $2,499,432 grant will support new research led by Professor Anthony Amend and his team to study how microbiomes influence food chains, which may lead to the creation of more efficient food webs that can potentially increase yield in agriculture, aquaculture and biofuels systems. This is the latest project in a storied history of groundbreaking microbiome research at UH Mānoa, spearheaded by Margaret McFall-Ngai, who joined the Carnegie Institution for Sciences in January 2022.

Food chains are inherently inefficient with major and predictable losses of energy due to waste and respiration. Research on food webs has mainly focused on the interactions among plants and animals. However, microbes (microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi) living in and on larger organisms play important roles in their health, rates of reproduction and ability to digest food.

The UH Mānoa project will examine how symbiotic microbes contribute to the efficiency of food webs, and how food webs determine the composition of symbiotic microbes. Results may indicate methods to manipulate the composition of microbes to create more efficient food webs that can potentially guide restoration of degraded habitats, capture carbon, and increase yield in agriculture, aquaculture and biofuels systems.

“Every time an animal eats a plant or another animal, about 90% of the energy of that food item escapes in the form of heat, while only the remaining 10% is transferred as biomass,” said Amend, who is the project’s principal investigator. “This inefficiency is one of the most steadfast rules of life, and is the reason there are comparatively few predators like sharks and lions in nature, but lots of plants and plant-eaters. We now know that symbiotic microbes living inside plants and animals can profoundly affect their ability to digest different types of food. If we can manipulate those microbes to change the efficiency with which food is converted to biomass—even by a small percentage—it could have tremendous impacts on our ability to manage complicated biological systems on which we rely, like watersheds and food systems.”

Amend added, “There has been a lot of great work on how microbiomes impact a single animal or plant, so we decided to scale that up to an entire ecosystem. It’s wild to think that the smallest living things can have the biggest impacts.”

Also on the research team are (PBRC) Assistant Professor Matthew Medeiros, PBRC Associate Professor Nicole Hynson and Assistant Professor Peter Sadowski.

Advancing microbiome research in Waimea Valley

This project builds on previous research conducted in Waimea Valley that indicated the surprising extent to which symbiotic microbes were shared amongst plants, animals, soils and sediments. This high degree of overlap among microbiomes across an entire watershed indicated that even unrelated organisms were reliant on each other as sources of critical microbial diversity. A commentary on the research was and Amend presented the findings at an Ecological Society of America meeting in August 2019.

Focus of research

Leveraging a model Hawaiian watershed system, this project aims to understand how host-associated microbiomes govern food chain efficiency and how, in turn, position within a food web affects the microbiome. Two experimental systems will be used to explore these predictions. The first is a simple food web that forms in the small pond of bromeliad plants, and the second consists of a lab-based mosquito microcosm. By analyzing the microbial genomic data, the researchers will decipher which specific microbial genes and proteins influence food web efficiency and function by altering digestive capacity of hosts.

The project will help train postdoctoral researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students in microbiome science through research in and out of the classroom. In addition, researchers will conduct workforce development and outreach to under-represented groups including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

This work is an example of UH Mānoa’s goals of (PDF) and (PDF), two of four goals identified in the (PDF), updated in December 2020.

—By Marc Arakaki