Seminar Vincent Milesi

The response of the subsurface biosphere to climatic, geologic and anthropogenic forcing depends on its relationship with environmental conditions. Multivariate analyses are often used to relate microbial communities with the physicochemical conditions of their habitats but these approaches are only semi-quantitative. On the other hand, thermodynamics offers an energy framework to understand the mechanistic link between the composition of the biosphere and the geosphere. In this presentation, I will show how the characterization of organic matter and metagenomes in the subsurface allows quantifying the energy associated with catabolic reactions and protein synthesis. Such comprehensive bioenergetic landscapes open perspectives to predict the response of microbial activity and taxonomic composition to environmental changes.