Molecular fossils, environmental genomics and the natural history of an Australian salt lake

Lakes in Australia face human-induced salinization. To understand the impact of increasing salinity, it is the aim of this project to make Lake Tyrrell in Victoria the most completely well understood microbial ecosystem in the world. Using a ground-breaking combination of molecular fossils with environmental genomics and proteomics, the study will reveal for the first time how an entire microbial ecosystem adapts to increasing salinities in the present, and how microbial communities and salinity have co-evolved over the past 100,000 years. Applying the most sensitive molecular fossil techniques in the world, we will trace saline ecosystems billions of years into the past and study their role in the early evolution of Life.