Uncovering life and planetary co-evolution through the genomic record

The maintenance of Earth’s habitability over geologic timescales is largely driven by the metabolisms and ecologies of bacteria and archaea. In this context, the role that microorganisms have played throughout major environmental transitions during the Archean and Proterozoic Eons are especially noteworthy. The “genomic record” represents the accumulated adaptations to planetary change maintained within the collective genetic pool of life. In this presentation, we will describe how the genomic record can be used to improve our understanding of microbial natural history and present six broadly applicable principles to aid in the investigation these complex questions. This framework will then be used to guide a a meta-analysis of microbial genomes derived from collections large metagenomic databases across diverse environments to illustrate how specific environmental variables drive the microbial diversity patterns we see today.