Michigan State University and the University of California, Merced are working to get a better handle on the huge problem of climate change with the help of some very small organisms.
Michigan State University and the University of California, Merced are working to get a better handle on the huge problem of climate change with the help of some very small organisms.
With $12.5 million from the National Science Foundation, MSU and UC Merced are launching an institute to focus on a new angle in climate change. The team will study impacts on microbes and their symbiotic relationships with host animals, including squid, insects and sea anemones. This information can better inform future climate models as well as immediate and long-term conservation strategies, the team said.
“There’s a lot of funding directed toward climate change, but everyone is looking at what you can see. We wanted to approach this problem through a microbial lens, so we proposed looking at symbiotic interactions,” said the institute’s director, Michele Nishiguchi of UC Merced. “Microbes are invisible, and they are important because they are on everything.”
“The vast majority of animal life has evolved with and in close contact with microbial life,” said MSU’s Elizabeth Heath-Heckman, a co-principal investigator for the project, which is called the Institute for Symbiotic Interactions, Training and Education, or INSITE.
Read more at Michigan State University
Image: MSU Associate Professor Kevin Liu (left) and MSU Assistant Professor Elizabeth Heath-Heckman (right) stand in the Heath-Heckman Symbiosis Lab. (Credit: Derrick L. Turner)
