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editorial
. 2019 Sep 27;62(10):1271–1274. doi: 10.1007/s11427-019-1554-y

Microbes: the hidden giant behind the biogeochemical cycling of elements in the hydrosphere

Li Huang 1,2,✉, Xiang Xiao 3,✉, Guoping Zhao 4,✉
PMCID: PMC7089548  PMID: 31578664

The content is available as a PDF (1.2 MB).

Compliance and ethics The author(s) declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Footnotes

Dr. Li Huang received his Ph.D. from the University of Guelph, Canada, in 1988. From 1988 to 1993, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University, USA. From 1993 to 1996, he was assistant professor at Pomona College, USA. Since 1996, he has been on faculty at the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was promoted to the rank of full professorship in 1998. From 1996 to 2008, he was initially deputy director and then director of the State Key Laboratory of Microbial Resources. From 2008 to 2013, he served first as executive deputy director-general and later as director-general of the Institute of Microbiology. He was awarded the China National Fund for Distinguished Young Scientists in 1999, and was leading a research group supported by the Funds for Creative Research Groups of China from 2007 to 2012. He is currently vice president of the Chinese Society for Microbiology. He also serves as managing editor of Extremophiles, associated editor of Acta Microbiologica Sinica, and editorial board member of SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences. His areas of research include genetic mechanisms in Archaea, archaeal viruses and marine viruses. Dr. Li Huang is vice chair of the steering committee of the Hydrosphere Microbes Program.

Dr. Xiang Xiao is distinguished professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Since 2009). He obtained his Ph.D. in molecular biology at Huazhong Agricultural University, China in 1998 and was a postdoctoral fellow in Biology/Chemistry Department, Osnabrueck University, Germany from 1999 to 2001. He was awarded the China National Fund for Distinguished Young Scientists in 2006. He has been supported by grants from several major research programs including the Deep Sea Biological and Genetic Resources Program from the China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association (COMRA), the Deep-Sea Cold Seep Research and the Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent Research Programs from National Natural Science Foundation of China. He was chief scientist on the COMRA Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent Biodiversity Research Cruise in 2008 and the Chinese Manned Deep-Sea Submersible Cruise in 2014–2015. Dr. Xiao’s research is focused on deep-sea high-pressure ecosystems and extremophiles in hydrothermal vents, cold seeps and sediments. He has successfully isolated and genetically manipulated several groups of extremophiles such as piezophiles, thermophiles and psychrophiles. Dr. Xiang Xiao currently serves on the steering committee of the Hydrosphere Microbes Program.

Dr. Guoping Zhao is molecular microbiologist and has been working on microbial physiology and metabolic regulation since he received his B.S. degree in biology from Fudan University in 1982. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from Purdue University, Indiana, USA in 1990. He returned to China in 1992 as the founding production manager of Shanghai Promega Biological Products, Ltd, a subsidiary joint venture of Shanghai Research Center of Biotechnology (SRCB), CAS, and an adjunct associate professor of Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology (SIPP, currently SIPPE), CAS. Currently, he is professor and chairman of the Advisory Committee of CAS Key Laboratory of SIPPE, after serving as its founding director for the term of 2008–2016. He has been the chief scientist of the Big Data Center for BioMedicine at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), CAS since 2016, and the professor and director of Department of Microbiology and Microbial Engineering at the School of Life Sciences, Fudan University since 2004. He also has been appointed as the adjunct chair professor of Microbiology by the Faculty of Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong since 2008. He was elected the member of CAS in 2005 and the president of the Chinese Society for Microbiology for the term of 2006–2011. Along with his scientific duties in program/project organization and institutional administration, he focused his research activities on genomics and systems biology, largely for microorganisms, of which, he devoted and contributed to a few important projects including the molecular evolution study of SARS-CoV during the 2003 and 2005 SARS epidemic. Dr. Guoping Zhao currently serves as chair of the steering committee of the Hydrosphere Microbes Program.

Contributor Information

Li Huang, Email: huangl@im.ac.cn.

Xiang Xiao, Email: xoxiang@sjtu.edu.cn.

Guoping Zhao, Email: gpzhao@sibs.ac.cn.

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