Investigating halophilic archaeal symbionts in co-culture with their hosts and enriching novel symbiont-host systems

Cultivation-independent techniques have revealed many novel lineages of microbial symbionts belonging to the Bacteria and Archaea, respectively. For example, the recently discovered DPANN archaea comprise diverse symbionts, including parasites, that are globally distributed but escaped our attention until very recently. Thus far, only few representatives of the DPANN have been successfully enriched in co-culture with their hosts and detailed studies of such cultivated symbiont-host systems are largely missing and limit our understanding of the biology, evolution and ecological function of DPANN.

In this project, you will shed insights into the growth dynamics and nature of the symbiotic interactions of a recently cultivated halophilic symbiont and its host(s) and enrich for novel symbionts belonging to the DPANN archaea in co-culture with their hosts. To this end, you will learn the cultivation of halophilic archaea, as well as use various microscopy and molecular approaches including qPCR. Furthermore, you will learn to enrich for novel symbionts belonging to the DPANN archaea in co-culture with their hosts.

Techniques:
•    Cultivation of symbionts and their hosts and substrate testing
•    Light -and Fluorescence-microscopy
•    Molecular biology (e.g. DNA purification, qPCR)
•    Comparative genome analyses

Contact

For more information and to apply, please contact Dr Anja Spang (anja.spang@nioz.nl).

Background reading

Dombrowski, N., Lee, J.H., Williams, T.A., Offre, P. and Spang, A. (2019). Genomic diversity, lifestyles and evolutionary origins of DPANN archaea. FEMS Microb. Letters Vol 366: 2, 1.

Hamm JN, Erdmann S, Eloe-Fadrosh EA, Angeloni A, Zhong L, Brownlee C, Williams TJ, Barton K, Carswell S, Smith MA, Brazendale S, Hancock AM, Allen MA, Raftery MJ, Cavicchioli R. Unexpected host dependency of Antarctic Nanohaloarchaeota. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Jul 16;116(29):14661-14670.

La Cono V, Messina E, Rohde M, Arcadi E, Ciordia S, Crisafi F, Denaro R, Ferrer M, Giuliano L, Golyshin PN, Golyshina OV, Hallsworth JE, La Spada G, Mena MC, Merkel AY, Shevchenko MA, Smedile F, Sorokin DY, Toshchakov SV, Yakimov MM. Symbiosis between nanohaloarchaeon and haloarchaeon is based on utilization of different polysaccharides. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Aug 18;117(33):20223-20234.