Biological and Microbial Responses to Deep-Sea Mining, Hypoxia, and Anthropogenic Disturbance

🧠 Background & Motivation

This project examines how deep-sea and pelagic marine ecosystems respond to large-scale environmental disturbances, including polymetallic nodule mining, monsoon-driven hypoxia, and industrial waste reuse. Using molecular, genomic, and ecological approaches, I investigated responses across micro-, meio-, and megafaunal communities, with a strong emphasis on baseline biodiversity assessment and ecosystem resilience in underexplored marine systems.

🎯 Research Questions & Objectives

*📌 Study 1: Deep-Sea Mining Impact — Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB)

• How does deep-sea mining affect benthic and pelagic ecosystems?
• How does biodiversity differ between polymetallic nodules, deep-sea sediments, and CIOB water column?

*📌 Study 2: Microbial Adaptation to Monsoon Hypoxia — Arabian Sea

• How do microbial communities persist, adapt, and remain metabolically active under seasonal hypoxia?

*📌 Study 3: Baseline Toxicity Assessment — Sustainable Marine Reuse

• What is the toxicity potential of steel slag, an industrial by-product, for marine reuse applications?

👨‍🔬 My Role

• Deep-sea sampling using multi-corer, beam trawl, and CTD water samplers
• Onboard sample storage and preprocessing for molecular analyses
• 16S and 18S rRNA amplicon sequencing
• Shotgun metagenomics and genome-resolved metagenomics
• Antioxidant and oxidative stress marker analysis
• Data processing, analysis, and interpretation

🧩 Challenges & Solutions

Challenge 1: DNA extraction from highly metallized manganese nodules
Solution: Implemented multiple pre-washing steps and tested alternative extraction protocols to standardize a robust method.

Challenge 2: Managing and analyzing large, heterogeneous datasets
Solution: Established a dedicated Linux-based server environment and installed reproducible bioinformatics pipelines.

🛠 Methods & Tools

*Data & Sequencing

• 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing
• 18S rRNA amplicon sequencing
• Shotgun metagenomics

*Bioinformatics

• QIIME2
• MetaWRAP
• SPAdes
• CoverM

*Infrastructure

• Linux Server from Meganet.

📄 Publications

• Dineshram R, Akhil Biju, Chayanika Rathore, Mahua Saha, Prabhu K, Chandramohan P, Jojy John, Anil KB.
  The first report on emerged microplastics in deep-sea sediment: Insights from the Central Indian Ocean Basin.
  Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2024.

• Dineshram Ramadoss, Aneesha Acharya, Bharath Subramanyam Ammanabrolu, Jojy John, Baban Ingole.
  Deep-sea life associated with sediments and polymetallic nodules from the Central Indian Ocean Basin: Insights from 18S metabarcoding.
  Deep-Sea Research Part II, 2025.

• Dineshram Ramadoss, Jojy John, Firoz Badesab, Muralidhar Kocherla, Anto Vasanth, Chellandi Mohandass.
  Baseline evaluation of the toxicity potential of steel slag using the green mussel Perna viridis for sustainable marine reuse applications.

• Jojy John, Dineshram R.
  Phototrophy and chemolithotrophy enhance adaptation of microbial populations to monsoon hypoxia in the Arabian Sea: Insights from genome-resolved metagenomic analysis.
  Under review, 2024.

🎤 Conferences & Talks

• Phototrophy and Chemolithotrophy drive microbial resilience to monsoon hypoxia in the Arabian Sea
  The International Conference on Emerging Concepts in Biotechnological Innovations (ICECBI-2025)
  SRM Institute of Science and Technology, India, 2025

📝 Reference

R Dineshram,PhD Scientist & Assistant Professor at AcSIR School of Oceanography Biological Oceanography Division CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography Dona Paula- 403004, Goa, India Ph: 91-(0)832 2450 301 Mob:+91 82489 53847 Email:dinesh@nio.org/dinbiot@gmail.com