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Volume 11, No. 2, Fall 01 | Return to Table of Contents
MBL Receives $1 Million to Establish the W. M. Keck Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics Facility
Grant will fund the purchase of advanced robotics and gene sequencing equipment to study microbial genomes and the environment
The Marine Biological Laboratory has received $1 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, California, to establish the W. M. Keck Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics Facility at the Laboratory’s Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution. The Bay Paul Center is directed by MBL Senior Scientist Mitchell Sogin.
This grant will provide funds to purchase advanced robotics and high-throughput DNA sequencing machines that will enable scientists to study how the genomes of vast communities of microorganisms interact with each other and contribute and respond to environmental change.
“This exciting grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation will provide cutting-edge tools that will allow our scientists to study more thoroughly how microbial communities shape our environment, and how complex microbial ecosystems evolve in response to human-caused or naturally occurring perturbations,” says MBL Director William T. Speck.
“The importance of microorganisms in our biosphere cannot be overstated,” says Center Director Mitchell Sogin. “They were the only forms of life on Earth during the first three billion years of our evolutionary history. Without microbes, the evolution of animals, plants and fungi would never have occurred,” he explains. “In fact, all multicellular organisms, including humans, are completely dependent on diverse species of microbes for their survival. Microbial life is the glue that binds together the macroscopic world.”
Unfortunately, very little is known about the specific organisms that make up the microbial world. Scientists are only able to culture, and therefore study, a small fraction of the billions of species of microbes that inhabit the Earth and its ecosystems. Thanks to the genetic revolution, however, scientists now have the tools to study the genomes that together comprise microbial communities.
“A microbial community is comparable to a composite ‘super-organism’ that responds in specific ways to environmental change,” notes Sogin.
Microbial ecologists, molecular evolutionists, and genome scientists from the MBL and other Woods Hole scientific communities will form a coalition to study these composite genomes and how they influence biogeochemical processes within ecosystems. This novel research initiative will be led by Sogin and his colleagues at the Josephine Bay Paul Center in Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution, which was established at the MBL in 1996. The Bay Paul Center merges the latest technologies in molecular biology and evolutionary theory to advance our understanding of how living organisms are related to each other, to provide tools to quantify and assess biodiversity, and to assist in efforts to identify genes of biomedical importance.
The Marine Biological Laboratory is pleased to acknowledge this important grant of $1 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation, established in 1954 by W. M. Keck. Its charge is to provide grants that have far-reaching benefits for humanity in the fields of science, engineering, and medical research. Reflecting W.M. Keck’s life as a pioneer, innovator, and risk-taker, the Foundation seeks out research that opens new directions and could lead to breakthrough discoveries and the development of new technologies. |
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