Illuminating microbial dark matter in mats

There is a huge untapped resource of uncharacterised biological information in the form of the vast majority of uncultured microbial community members in microbial mat systems. This ‘microbial dark matter’ describes the abundance of uncultivated microorganisms present in many microbial ecosystems. These include the CPR (Candidate Phyla Radiation), novel archaea under the DPANN (Diapherotrites, Parvarchaeota, Aenigmarchaeota, Nanoarchaeota, Nanohaloarchaea) superphylum, and the newly discovered Asgard superphylum (consisting of Lokiarchaeota, Thorarchaeota, Odinarchaeota, and Heimdallarchaeota). Many of these microbial lineages have no cultured representatives and represent a major unexplored and uncharacterised portion of microbial diversity.

This project, together with collaborators Dr Hon Lun (Alan) Wong, Prof Pieter Visscher, and Dr Rick White, aims to uncover the role of novel microbial dark matter in modern microbial mat ecosystems utilising innovative molecular approaches. Advances in microbial dark matter research have the potential to alter our understanding of key tenets of evolutionary principles.