Dear Colleagues,
A Town Meeting will be held at ASLO next week to assess community interest in the development of a marine microbial biogeography and biogeochemistry (i.e. ‘omics’) program akin to the current GEOTRACES program. This idea emerged from an OCB scoping meeting we attended last autumn entitled “The Molecular Biology of Biogeochemistry”. In addition to genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, attendees at the meeting agreed that metabolomics should also comprise a key component of this effort. Metabolomics was defined in the broadest possible sense to include all molecules aside from intact (i.e. amenable to sequencing) nucleic acids and proteins; obviously, the field of organic geochemistry could make important contributions to this component of the program. As it stands now, this nascent ‘omics’ program is coalescing around a potential sectional cruise in the eastern South Pacific for the autumn of 2013, which will be focused on water column processes. However, the ultimate trajectory of the cruise/program will be defined by input from the oceanographic community over the next several months.
There has been much discussion within the community of organic geochemists on the merits of a sectional survey program. The role organic chemistry might ultimately play in this ‘omics’ program remains to be defined. So, if you are attending the ASLO meeting next week, we encourage you to participate in this Town Meeting on Wednesday, February 16, in Room 208B from 18:30 to 19:30. Please see the flyer below for more details.
Sincerely,
Anitra Ingalls - University of Washington
Liz Kujawinski – WHOI
Ann Pearson – Harvard
Ben Van Mooy - WHOI

Town Hall Meeting: Microbial Biogeography and Biogeochemistry
2011 ASLO Meeting, Wednesday, 16 February 2011 , 18:30 to 19:30, Room 208 B, Puerto Rico Convention Center

Conveners: Eric Webb, University of Southern California, eawebb@usc.edu and Ben Van Mooy, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, bvanmooy@usc.edu

An Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Scoping Workshop chaired by Jim Moffett and Eric Webb (University of Southern California) was held in Los Angeles in November 2010 entitled “The Molecular Biology of Biogeochemistry.” The goal of this workshop was to assess the potential role of molecular biology to study marine biogeochemical cycles, particularly the carbon cycle, via large survey programs such as GEOTRACES. Rapid advances in molecular methods are providing new tools applicable to global surveys and other observational programs focused on the oceans’ response to changing climate and other impacts. However, molecular biologists generally examine ecological problems like community diversity, whereas geochemists are more interested in functionality and rates. Here, geochemists and molecular biologists sought common ground to identify which molecular biological measurements would be most useful for understanding marine biogeochemical cycles and characterizing their response to climate change.
Workshop participants were enthusiastic about the integration of geochemical and marine biological tools in existing large survey programs but recognized the need for a new, stand-alone field campaign to characterize the biogeography of marine microbial communities that will compliment the existing global survey and observational programs. The new program will characterize the distribution of microbial communities within the ocean on complete surface to bottom sections and couple these data important geochemical measurements and with rate measurements of key processes. Such a program was seen as essential to achieve the core science objectives in biogeochemistry that was the charge of the workshop. A stand-alone program is desirable for logistical and science reasons, but the core parameters in GEOTRACES are highly complementary. Therefore, a plan was outlined for a sectional survey cruise in Fall 2013 concurrently or back to back with a proposed GEOTRACES zonal section in the eastern tropical South Pacific. The effort will be spearheaded by participants at the workshop, and led by Ginger Armbrust (University of Washington). However, planning of the program is still at a very early stage, and input from the broader community of marine microbiologists, biogeochemists and modelers is essential.
The following objectives were developed as an organizational framework for the development of the hypotheses and approaches for the first sectional cruise and the project as a whole:
(1) Characterize and define the connections between the presence and activity of microbes (i.e., functional biogeography) and physical and chemical parameters, utilizing the tools of an unprecedented, large group of microbiologists and geochemists.
(2) Utilize genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics in combination with process measurements to define biogeochemical ‘connections’ and their constraints.
(3) Integrate results from multiple sections to identify boundaries of microbial biogeographic provinces (analogous to the Longhurst provinces) over horizontal and vertical scales.
(4) Develop an operational framework for many laboratories to collaborate together using a variety of molecular and biogeochemical tools that includes rigorous protocols for methodological inter-calibration and standardization
(5) Incorporate the program’s observations into a new generation of models that capture the connections between microbes and chemistry in an ocean perturbed by climate change.
At the Town Meeting, these plans will be discussed along with a detailed summary of the meeting deliberations about the topics in points 1-5.