| Session Details | |
| Section | IWG - Interdisciplinary Working Groups |
| Session Title | Living Extreme: Untangling the Interactions Between Microorganisms and the Solid Earth |
| Main Convener | Dr. Pei-Ling Wang (National Taiwan University, Taiwan) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Li-Hung Lin (National Taiwan University, Taiwan) |
| Session Description | Microorganisms have coevolved with the Earth for billions of years. Their capability on acquiring metabolic energy from various substrates and adapting to environmental extremes renders the extent of habitable niche expanded to a large portion of the upper crust. Recent estimates suggest that microorganisms beneath soil constitute a significant proportion of the total biomass inventory and would therefore play a pivotal role on the elemental cycling among geosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere. How geological processes regulate the expression of microbial activity and function and how microbial processes control the geochemical characteristics of the surrounding environments remain largely unknown. With the newly developed technologies in geosciences, microbiology and molecular biology, dissecting microbial distribution, function and assemblage near the biological limit at finer spatial and temporal scales becomes possible. The session will invite scientists to present works on all aspects related with the interactions between microbial and geological processes. Topics of interests include, but are not limited to, (1) Microbial formation and degradation of hydrocarbons (2) Deep biosphere (3) Microbially-catalytic metal transformation (4) Isotopic fingerprints of microbial processes (5) Hydrothermal and geothermal ecosystems (6) Bioenergetics |