PRE2023-EPIC: Ecological characterization of Picozoa, an abundant and enigmatic protistan group (PID2022-137508NB-I00)

Molecular surveys of microbial diversity have been transformative for the smallest protists in the ocean, revealing the existence of a large phylogenetic diversity and the presence of unsuspected novel groups. One of such novel groups discovered in the seminal studies is the Picozoa. These small heterotrophic protists are abundant in marine photic waters, and despite fragmentary data acquired in the last two decades, there is still a very poor knowledge on the cell biology, biogeography, and ecological role of these uncultured eukaryotic taxa. The project EPIC aims to shed light on the cell biology, ecology and evolution of picozoans. The PhD candidate will use diverse and complementary methodologies to study the ecology and genomics of picozans, including analysis of existing and newly prepared metabarcoding datasets, FISH probe design and semi-automatic microscopy, experiments to define the trophic mode of picozoans (phagotrophy versus osmotrophy), single cell genomics, and meta-omics analyses to search for the presence and expression of picozoan genes in natural assemblages.