Seawater is a complicated soup of chemicals including dissolved organic material (DOM), such as sugars, fats and amino acids all containing carbon. In fact, there is roughly the same amount of carbon within marine DOM as there is CO2 in the atmosphere. So how did this carbon become DOM, and what controls its production and fate? Atmospheric CO2, dissolves in seawater where small single celled organisms called phytoplankton incorporate it into organic molecules essential for their growth. Some of these organic molecules leak from healthy cells, while more are released when cells die, or are eaten, creating an oceanic pool of DOM. Many people are familiar with the concept that phytoplankton support marine food webs and that dead cells and detritus generated by different biological processes sink to the seafloor to be buried in sediments. This process effectively transports carbon, originally present as atmospheric CO2, to the seafloor; this is termed the 'Biological Carbon Pump' (BCP). A separate process, which scientists have only recently become aware of, provides another way of removing and storing atmospheric CO2. The key role in this process is played by even smaller organisms which are numerically the most abundant life form in the oceans: the bacteria. Bacteria quickly act upon the DOM released from phytoplankton and the activities of their associated food web, scavenging parts they can most readily use for growth. Progressively, over weeks and months, sequential scavenging of components of DOM gradually transforms the chemical nature of the remaining material so that the residual molecules contain little else worth taking. These molecules, commonly defined as 'refractory-DOM', are biologically worthless, and are left to travel the Earth's Oceanic currents. The process described here is called the 'Microbial Carbon Pump' (MCP) and is thought to have slowly accumulated and stored a staggering amount of refractory-DOM over the past millennia, estimated to be 624 gigatonnes. This incredible reservoir of carbon is currently thought to be stable, with abiotic removal processes (e.g. photo degradation) balancing its production. However, recent studies suggest that that the projected decrease in surface ocean inorganic nutrient availability due to climate change could modify MCP activity, increasing refractory-DOM production with respect to its consumption. This implies that marine bacteria have the potential to mitigate the anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 by shunting more carbon into refractory-DOM. This hypothesis, if verified, will radically change the way we think of the capacity of the biosphere to modulate climate, suggesting a previously overlooked climate-active role for marine bacteria. The only way we have to understand if this mechanism is significant is to use numerical models and run them under changing environmental conditions. However, to date, no ocean or Earth system models account for MCP dynamics. In this project, we will conduct laboratory experiments to provide the required level of physiological information and understanding needed to enable us to develop the first model describing the MCP and its relationship with nutrient concentration and temperature. This outcome will be the first critical step toward the simulation of the MCP in present and future oceans. To achieve this ambitious goal, the project will bring together a multidisciplinary team of internationally recognised scientists, from chemical analysts to system biology and ecosystem modellers. The project team will be boosted by the partnership with Prof N. Jiao (Xiamen University, China) who first proposed the MCP concept in a seminal paper 7 years ago.

Chinese history was co-constructed by Han (Chinese) people, transmitters of farming language and culture, and non-Han people, typically transmitters of nomadic language and culture in North and Northwest China. Governance by non-Han steppe rulers lasted for almost ten centuries (half of the history of imperial China since the First Emperor of Qin) and the Gansu-Qinghai area was the most important migration corridor between Central and East Asia. These languages and populations have competed, mixed and merged for ages. Surprisingly, a cross-linguistically comprehensive portrait of this region is missing in spite of individual language descriptions. The present Project will study language mixture and language replacement patterns in the Gansu-Qinghai area, which geographically constitutes a natural demarcation between nomadic herders and farmers. In this intense contact area, home to nomadic languages and populations, Sinitic (Han) languages started to resemble non-Han languages, adopting similar syntactic means, while Yugur languages (Western Yugur belongs to Turkic language group and Eastern Yugur belongs to Mongolic language group), spoken by typical nomadic populations, kept their syntax relatively intact. The mixing degree of languages and populations in this area remains unclear, and in-depth research with an interdisciplinary approach is necessary. The Project will determine the linguistic situation in this anthropological corridor by targeting two nomadic languages (Western and Eastern Yugur) and a variety of Sinitic languages. The analysis of language mixing and language replacement processes will be based on quantified data modeling, part of which will come from molecular anthropology and other fields such as history and archeology. This interdisciplinary approach will offer a global vision of language and population mixing in the Gansu-Qinghai area and a living sample of language preservation or loss due to different lifestyles and cultures.

Invasive species are currently considered second only to habitat loss as a cause of rapid and undesirable changes in the functioning of ecosystems worldwide. In the United Kingdom alone, the annual cost of invasive species is estimated to be ~£1.7 billion. In this context, major cause for concern is that human-mediated species translocations and global warming are both causing rapid shifts in species' ranges and phonologies at an escalating rate. For example, a Pacific diatom Neodenticula seminae was documented into the North Atlantic for the first time in 800,000 years due to climate-driven melting of the Arctic ice cap and changes in ocean circulation. Such abrupt introductions can result in novel interactions (e.g., predator-prey or resource competition), which then have the potential to result in disruptive invasions of non-native species into local communities. In this project, we will meet the challenge of developing a general framework for predicting invasion success by building the first-ever global database on the temperature dependence of metabolic (physiological) traits relevant to species invasions through interactions, use these data to develop and parameterize a novel theoretical framework, and test some key predictions of this theory using laboratory experiments with a globally important functional group, the Phytoplankton (photosynthetic unicellular marine and freshwater algae and bacteria). Phytoplankton form the base of form the base of most aquatic food webs and contribute over half of global primary production. We will address three core questions: (1) How will mismatches in how metabolic traits (e.g., respiration and photosynthesis rate) of natives and non-native species respond to temperature change affect invasions? This question is important because new species often arrive with the physiological "baggage" of the environment they originated in, and therefore may be poorly adapted to their new environment (at least initially). (2) Does the rate and magnitude of thermal acclimation (defined as phenotypic changes in thermal-response with change in environmental temperature) in a non-native species to its new environment influence its invasion success? This question is important because many species can overcome the initial disadvantage of a novel environment by rapidly adjusting the way their metabolism responds to temperature. (3) Are natural temperature cycles important determinants of invasion success? This question is important because species invasions, especially in temperate regions, take place in climates that change cyclically at daily (say-night cycles) and seasonal (e.g., winter-summer) scales. Therefore, a non-native species that arrives, say, in winter, may have a lesser chance of invading successfully than if it arrived in summer. Overall, this study will fill a major gap in our understanding of the importance of metabolic constraints on species interactions for species invasions. We expect our results to form a new and robust foundation for predicting species invasions in natural as well as human-dominated environments. Our global database on metabolic traits will be a valuable, long-term resource for mapping metabolic traits onto potentially invasive species, and also for parameterizing ongoing efforts to model the effects of climate change on ecosystem services, including the carbon cycle.

Our aim is to apply state-of-the-art machine learning based digital technology recently developed in our research to facilitate large scale manufacturing of three photo-production processes for high-value biorenewables (i.e. Spirulina biomass, lutein, and arachidonic acid) production. Microalgal photo-production processes directly convert solar energy and CO2 into healthcare relevant commercial compounds, and are considered as a promising sustainable biotechnology for future industry. Sales of the three products investigated in this project have been estimated to be £1.13 billion by 2024. The global market demand of photo-production based chemicals has been expected to reach £35 billion by 2023, with an annual growth rate of 5.2%. Developing digital technologies to construct automated biomanufacturing systems for valuable biomaterials production is of great importance to the UK's economy. The UK's Bioeconomy is currently worth ~£220 billion and is predicted to double by 2030. This sector also supports over 5 million jobs. In order for the UK to retain its leadership in industrial biotechnology and digital economy, it is crucial to develop cost-effective and self-sustained photo-production processes to reduce dependency on petroleum chemicals and fossil fuels. This will cement the UK as a world-pioneer in 'smart' manufacturing and disruptive biotechnology, with benefits not only in generating high quality products and services, but also boosting the national economy through the manufacture of healthcare relevant chemicals and creation of new job opportunities. The two research groups at Xiamen University, China are national leading experts and have rich industrial experience in sustainable photo-production process design, scale-up, and optimisation. There are a range of experimental facilities and photobioreactors from lab scale to industrial scale available at their groups. We have established initial collaborations with the groups in China. To guarantee success, we will: (i) develop different modelling tools to quantify the three photo-production systems, and test their accuracy for process prediction and state estimation; (ii) integrate advanced online optimisation techniques into the models to form a digital framework for process monitoring and optimal control, and verifies the framework's performance through lab and pilot scale experiments; (3) update the digital framework and install it into the large scale manufacturing systems, meanwhile embed a deep learning technology into the digital framework to visualise process behaviour at different temporal and spatial space. Most of the digital technologies have been developed in the University of Manchester, and there are sufficient experimental resources and experimental facilities at Xiamen University. This international collaboration provides an excellent opportunity to link frontier digital technologies invented in the UK with advanced industrial biotechnologies developed in China, and will initiate the first thorough investigation in using novel digital technologies for photo-production process real-time monitoring and state estimation, online optimisation and control, and bioreactor visualisation. This project will boost collaborations between the University of Manchester and Xiamen University, and will significantly benefit the academics and PhD students involved in this project. Outcome will be used as evidence to: i) apply for future long-term collaborative grants such as the Newton Institutional Links Grants, the High-level Foreign Experts Plan, and the UKRI-China R&D fund; ii) co-supervise PhD and MSc students to extend their knowledge in fields of experimentation and simulation; iii) secure PhD studentships from overseas companies and the China Scholarship Council; iv) bring advanced industrial skills into UK SME biotech companies to facilitate the domestic development of photo-production processes and industrial biotechnologies.

Biofuels produced from algae constitute an outstanding alternative to replace conventional fossil fuels and diversify sustainable energy sources. Because solar energy and atmospheric carbon dioxide are the direct energy and carbon source for biofuel production, no additional carbon dioxide is released to the environment when burning these fuels. Therefore, algae based biofuel production processes are a match for circular economy and are characterised by industrial sustainability. In order to facilitate the commercialisation of environmentally friendly biofuels, this proposal aims to determine the sustainable excretable biofuels production process routes for transportation energy supply. In particular, three excretable biofuels, biohydrogen (clean transport fuel), biobutanol (replacement of gasoline) and biohydrocarbon (alternative of diesel), will be selected due to their estimated huge global demand in near future. Throughout this project, advanced bioprocess simulation and optimisation methodologies for the economic and environmental assessment of excretable biofuels will be constructed to resolve this challenge. Moreover, the strategies developed in my proposed research can be applied not only to biofuel production, but also to other future bioprocesses.