2026 Undergraduate Research Showcase

Exploring Microbial Metabolic Pathways in Pitcher Plant and Lake Metagenomes

Document Type

Student Presentation

Presentation Date

4-24-2026

Faculty Sponsor

Dr. Leonora Bittleston and Chadwick DeFehr

Abstract

Microbes play a foundational role in most ecological processes and can exhibit diverse metabolic capabilities and distinct host preferences. Many studies of environmental microbial communities are from large and complex sources, creating challenges for understanding how they contribute to relevant ecosystem functions. Pitcher plant microcosms serve as a useful model ecosystem and can contribute to broader insights in community ecology; however, it is important to characterize how they might differ from larger aquatic ecosystems like lakes. In this study we analyzed and compared microbial metabolic pathways of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) across sixteen metagenomes of two species of pitcher plants and eleven publicly-available metagenomes sampled from globally distributed freshwater lakes. Using bioinformatics tools, we assembled contigs, binned MAGs, annotated functional genes, and plotted our data to compare microbial functioning across samples. Our results showed similar Kegg-Orthology profile compositions between Sarracenia and Nepenthes pitcher plant samples, distinct from the highly variable profile compositions among the freshwater lake samples. This demonstrates the potential influence pitcher plants exert on their microbial communities even on opposite sides of the world, driving more convergent metabolic capabilities.

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