Collaborative interaction between research and education has the potential for many positive outcomes. A project can provide a research topic and an organizational framework for data, and students under instruction can offer group contributions, new explorations, new products, and/or iterative contributions to problems that may require sustained and collaborative efforts. The microbial world is highly diverse, and quantifying the role of microbes in ecosystem processes is fraught with limitations stemming from the high organic, phylogenetic, genomic, and ecological diversity and the large number of microbes forming complex communities in the soil ecosystem.
The primary motivation for this iCURE is to merge research on the role of microbes in carbon degradation in terrestrial ecosystems with practical experience to introduce students to microbial research. Here, an ICURE-CMT (peatland microbial culture) is proposed as a collaborative platform for developing knowledge that can be integrated into predictive (modeling) efforts to explore the contribution of microbes to carbon cycling in terrestrial ecosystems.
This section provides access to all the materials needed to implement the ICURE-CMT, as well as the submission platform.Microbial Collection for Tropical Peatlands (C3-MicroTroP)
Through their membership in the Google Group “ICURE-Cultivating Peatland Microbes,” participants will be able to access all the documentation described here. ASETT will conduct training sessions with researchers who request them before beginning their ICURE. The alignment of pedagogical and research objectives, as well as voluntary participation in C3-MicroTroP, is presented here.
Alignment of research and pedagogy objectives

Instructional materials

For access to Google Groups, please fill inthis formPlease indicate your contact information, motivation, and possible implementation dates. ASETT will seek to support you with training and materials where possible.
The Microbial Collection for Tropical Peatlands (C3-MicroTroP)
C3-MicroTroP is a non-profit collection of microbial cultures obtained from tropical peatlands for ecosystem studies. ICURE participants are invited to contribute to the 3,000 isolates already registered in this collection. The collection is committed to respecting the property rights of the strain sources and sharing public data, if generated, including verified identity, growth data, and genome data. To contribute, participants must follow the Google C3-MicroTroP platform.
Strains isolated from tropical peatlands are summarized in this figure, concentrated in the peatlands of Buena Vista (rich forest peatland), San Jorge (poor forest peatland) and Quistococha (palm peatland):

Figure showing the co-distribution of families observed in the metagenomic analysis of Pavia et al., 2022, and cultured strains from the C3-MicroTroP collection. Metagenome-based family counts (side columns) are based on ORF counts, as reflected in the bottom scale, while isolated strains are represented by circles of absence (red) and presence (blue), according to the scale provided on the right of the figure.

You can always contact us at asett.turbera.direcion@gmail.com for any questions or collaboration.