Väitös (biologia): MSc Aditya Jeevannavar

MSc Aditya Jeevannavar esittää väitöskirjansa ”Microeukaryote-prokaryote interactions in aquatic ecosystems” julkisesti tarkastettavaksi Turun yliopistossa perjantaina 6.2.2026 klo 12.00 (Turun yliopisto, Publicum, Pub2, Assistentinkatu 7, Turku).

Vastaväittäjänä toimii professori, tohtori Micah Dunthorn (Oslon yliopisto, Norja) ja kustoksena professori, tohtori Harri Savilahti (Turun yliopisto). Tilaisuus on englanninkielinen. Väitöksen alana on biologia.

Tiivistelmä väitöstutkimuksesta:

Microorganisms have been the most dominant forms of life in Earth's history and continue to form the majority of biomass and biodiversity on the planet. Yet, very little is known about the vast majority of these diverse microbial species. Traditionally, microorganisms have been studied by isolating them in a lab and learning about their activity and behaviour. However, most species have never been isolated in a lab or are impossible to grow in a lab using currently available knowledge. Thus, this thesis puts forward a molecular method that can be used to study microorganisms in the environment without isolating or growing them in a lab.

The methodology developed as a part of this thesis contributes to our understanding of two under-studied aspects of microbial ecology:

First, no organism in nature remains isolated from all others. Microorganisms, like other organisms, interact with one another. These interactions may be essential for ecosystem stability as well as various other ecosystem functions.

Second, traditional molecular methods of learning about the activity and behaviour of microorganisms relies on pre-existing reference information about them. Environmental microorganisms that are uncultivable or that do not have pre-existing reference information are understudied.

This thesis uses a new method, in the form of single-cell transcriptomics, to study which microorganisms are present in an environment, what they do there, and who they interact with, all without the need for expensive and laborious labwork or pre-existing reference information. This sets the stage to study the identities, functions, and interactions of these organisms in the stressful, heterogeneous, and ephemeral conditions that they naturally occur in. Knowledge of the identities, functions, and interactions active in an environment adds to our understanding of ecosystem stability as well as their potential human utility.