On August 7, the Department of Ocean Science and Engineering (OSE) at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) hosted the 2020 Meeting on Marine Microbes and Dissolved Organic Matter Interactions. OSE collaborated with the Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Marine Archaea Geo-Omics, the State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing at the China University of Petroleum (Beijing) (CUP-BJ) and Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU).

OSE Deputy Head and Chair Professor Chuanlun ZHANG and CUP-BJ Professor Quan SHI co-chaired the seminar. More than four thousand participants tuned in to the online broadcast.

OSE Chair Professor Chuanlun ZHANG spoke about the background to the seminar. He spoke highly of the importance of the seminar, highlighting its in-depth process and mechanisms behind microbial regulation in the carbon cycle. Eleven young scholars from top institutions in the United States and China gave illuminating reports on topics like microbial species succession, soluble organic matter, dissolved organic matter, and bacteria.

The seminar focused on dissolved organic matter (DOM) and microbial metabolism. Microbes can obtain energy and carbon from DOM, which can also be produced during microbial metabolism. DOM is a highly complex system but is of significant interest to researchers. The relationship between DOM and microbial metabolism has been studied as part of the marine carbon cycle & the mechanisms regulated by microorganisms.

The seminar discussed the causes of the two systems, examined new research ideas, and laid out opportunities for future cooperation.

The State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing at CUP-BJ formed a partnership with OSE in May 2017 to study DOM molecular composition analysis. There have been a series of academic seminars every year between the two universities, with an increasing number of participants and more influence.