Fabrication of a Flow Cytometer Designed for the Synoptic Analysis of Marine Microbial Food Webs

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will undertake an instru- mentation development project to further advance the use of flow cytometry for ocean science research purposes. Flow cytometers were originally developed for the biomedical research community. Flow cytometers have developed into effective tools for biological oceanographic research, by rapidly providing information on samples containing particles as small as marine bacteria to large single- celled phytoplankton. This work will bring several unique capabilities to flow cytometric analysis of pelagic ecosystems: synoptic analysis (light scatter, abundance, and autofluorescence of plankton ranging from 0.3 to 100 microns in diameter); detailed analysis of light scatter signals through digital signal processing; and advanced, real-time neural-network analysis of population parameters. These enhanced capabilities will facilitate process studies by population ecologists and they will contribute to the development of remote sensing algorithms.