Dr. Yang and collaborators awarded NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity grant!
Dr. Yang along with Drs. Kostas Konstantinidis, Frank Loffler, and Robert Sanford were awarded a 5-year $2 M NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity grant set to start on August 1! The overarching goal of the proposed study is to determine if the abundance and taxonomic diversity of N2O-reducing bacterial species (phylogenetic diversity), as well as the activity of diverse nosZ gene alleles (genetic diversity), can predict the N2O reduction rates and N2O emissions (functional diversity) of representative U.S. terrestrial ecosystems. The working hypothesis is that the taxonomic and the genetic diversity (i.e., nosZ alleles) in soils are largely not functionally redundant, but rather are tuned to different substrate concentrations (N2O in this case) or environmental conditions, and ultimately determine N2O emissions.