Oral Presentation Australian Microbial Ecology 2019

Resolving proteomic responses to supercritical carbon dioxide exposure in Geobacter sulfurreducens (#45)

Angus Keillar 1 , John W Moreau 1 , Jay R Black 1
  1. Universtiy of Melbourne, Parkville, VICTORIA, Australia

The geological storage of COin a supercritical form is one of the essential tools required towards meeting the Paris accords. This research aims to determine how the deep subsurface microbial community may respond to large-scale geo-sequestration of CO2.  In-vitro experiments show that many microbes display limited growth and survive for short time periods when exposed to supercritical CO2. However, field studies indicate that the whole community can survive and shift in response to supercritical COexposure. Understanding how a particular microorganism responds to supercritical COexposure will allow us to begin to understand the community shifts we see in field studies. BONCAT is a powerful tool that allows for the temporal selectivity of proteins in pulse tag experiments. Pulse times as low as a few minutes allow for rapid selection of newly created proteins. Here we investigated the potential for BONCAT tagging to provide insights into the proteomic response of Geobacter sulfurreducens exposed to supercritical CO2. Preliminary findings indicate that the application of non-canonical amino acids to a Geobacter sulfurreducens containing growth media result in the production of endogenous BONCAT tagged proteins. Furthermore, the time frame for the incorporation of the non-canonical amino acids into endogenous proteins is relevant to supercritical CO2 exposure. These findings suggest that further investigation of the application of BONCAT tagging on Geobacter sulfurreducens cultures under supercritical COconditions is a promising step towards understanding the proteomic response of microbes exposed to supercritical CO2.