{"590382":{"#nid":"590382","#data":{"type":"event","title":"PhD Defense by Luis H Orellana","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESchool of Civil and Environmental Engineering\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EPh.D. Thesis Defense Announcement\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EMultiomic approaches for assessing the role of natural microbial communities in nitrous oxide emission from Midwestern agricultural soils\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBy\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ELuis H Orellana\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAdvisor:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDr. Kostas Konstantinidis (CEE)\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECommittee Members:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDr. Jim Spain (CEE), Dr. Spyros Pavlostathis (CEE), Dr. Joe Brown (CEE), Dr. Joel Kostka (Biological Sciences), and\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDr. Frank L\u0026ouml;ffler (U of Tennessee).\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDate \u0026amp; Time:\u003C\/strong\u003E Friday, April 28th, 2017, 1:00 pm\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ELocation:\u003C\/strong\u003E Ford ES\u0026amp;T Building, Room L1125\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EAnthropogenic activities such as fossil fuel consumption and industrial nitrogen (N) fixation processes have increased\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Ethe N inputs into the environment. Even though the central role of microbes in N cycling is recognized, the identification and\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Ediversity of these microbes and their pathways in agricultural soils are still lacking. This scarcity of information limits the\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Edevelopment of more accurate, predictive models of N-flux including the role of microbes in the generation and consumption\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Eof important nitrogenous greenhouse gases (e.g., nitrous oxide, N2O). The advent of new high-throughput nucleic acid sequencing\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Etechnologies allows nowadays the exploration of soil microbial communities that were previously insufficiently studied\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Ebased on cultivation and PCR approaches.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EIn this work, we integrated experimental data and bioinformatic approaches to identify and quantify indigenous soil\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Emicroorganisms participating in N cycling in two distinct soils that typify the Midwest cornbelt. We developed a new bioinformatic\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Eapproach, called ROCker, to accurately detect target genes and transcripts in complex short-read metagenomes and metatranscriptomes,\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Ewhich offered up to 60-fold lower false discovery rate compared to the common strategy of using e-value\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Ethresholds. Using ROCker, we found an unexpectedly high abundance of nitrous oxide reductase genes, the only known biological\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Esink of N2O, in soil and aquatic environments. Further, we show that microbial communities are remarkably stable across\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Ethe year in typical agricultural soils compared to other environments except during nitrogen fertilization events, which stimulate\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Ethe activity of novel nitrogen-utilizing \u003Cem\u003ENitrospirae \u003C\/em\u003Eand \u003Cem\u003EThaumarchaeota \u003C\/em\u003Etaxa. Lastly, we assessed the power of omic\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Etechniques to predict microbial in-situ activity rates and found high correlations between target gene transcripts and experimentally\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Emeasured nitrification activity in soil mesocosms. These findings advance the molecular toolbox for studying complex\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Emicrobial communities and have implications for better understanding and modeling the dynamics of the keystone microbial\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Especies that control the N cycle in soils.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Multiomic approaches for assessing the role of natural microbial communities in nitrous oxide emission from Midwestern agricultural soils"}],"uid":"27707","created_gmt":"2017-04-14 12:51:15","changed_gmt":"2017-04-14 12:51:15","author":"Tatianna Richardson","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2017-04-28T14:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2017-04-28T16:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2017-04-28T16:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2017-04-28 18:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2017-04-28 20:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2017-04-28 20:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"221981","name":"Graduate Studies"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"100811","name":"Phd Defense"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1788","name":"Other\/Miscellaneous"}],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78771","name":"Public"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}