Over five years ago, in collaboration with the MIT and other US universities, we started the Principles of Microbial Ecosystems (PriME) project with the goal of developing a quantitative synthesis of microbial ecology.
Thanks to the further financial support provided by the Simons Foundation, we will be able to continue our effort towards the understating of how marine microbes form communities and how these communities function with the vision to develop a general blueprint for a similar quantitative understanding of microbes in other environments and ultimately for environmental microbiology at large.