Stoichiometric flexibility shapes microbial function and community assembly. This project aims to investigate how variation in resource supply shapes the function and assembly of soil and gut microbia

Description

Stoichiometric flexibility shapes microbial function and community assembly. This project aims to investigate how variation in resource supply shapes the function and assembly of soil and gut microbial systems. This project expects to reveal how flexibility in elemental stoichiometry is not only a key physiological adaptation to fluctuating and nutritionally unbalanced resource supply, but also scales up and affects community assembly and ecosystem processes. Expected outcomes of this project include a new nutritional framework centred on variability that yields a step-change in understanding how microbial systems function. This should improve our ability to predict the outcomes of interventions to the human microbiome, and shifts in biogeochemical cycles due to environmental change. . Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3107 - Microbiology. Lead: Prof Charles Warren