The central theme of our study of hypersaline Lake Tyrrell is to determine the influence of salinity on microbial ecosystems. We want to make Lake Tyrrell, Australia the best understood hypersaline ecosystems in the world. To achieve this, we are using a combination of environmental genomics and biomarker geochemistry to quantify the entirety ‘community’ of genes, lipids and pigments in the lake water with the goal of assigning them to different microbes that were identified by their genome (even if these can't be cultured). We are achieving this goal by deep genome sequencing of samples and biolipid and pigment analysis. Our data will provide a very detailed view of how the microbial community in Lake Tyrrell is constructed and how the ecosystem functions.