Purchase of a Flow Cytometer for the Large-scale Assessment of Biogenic Particles in Estuarine and Coastal Systems

该项目将提供一台标准台式流式细胞仪，具有氩激光照明、五参数分析和细胞分选能力。流式细胞仪是跨学科研究陆海边缘水生生态系统中参与主要元素循环和通量的微生物种群和生物源粒子动态的重要工具。流式细胞术最初是作为细胞生物学和临床研究中分析单个细胞或生物颗粒的工具而发展起来的。它最近在水生生物学中得到了广泛的应用，因为它可以提供水生系统中生物源和非生物颗粒的丰度和特征的时间和空间分辨率，这是目前其他技术无法比拟的。目前需要这种分辨率来补充河口和海洋中元素循环的大规模模型，在河口和海洋中，生物颗粒的分布和特征是决定基本化学成分的脂肪和通量的关键因素。因此，流式细胞术不再是一种局限于临床研究的技术，而是一种有益的补充，可以补充水生生态学和生物化学中常规使用的其他技术。本研究旨在扩大流式细胞术在大西洋中部河口和大陆架生态系统中生物源颗粒密度、分布、细胞特征、分类组成和营养相互作用研究中的应用。该仪器将驻留在角点环境实验室，该实验室主要致力于研究浮游生物动力学、物理海洋学以及河口和海洋生态系统中的物理-生物相互作用。该仪器用途广泛，可用于实验室和船舶研究以及实验室课程工作。操作相对简单，用户友好，不仅是生态研究的理想工具，也是教育的理想工具。

This project will provide for the acquisition of a standard bench top flow cytometer with argon laser illumination, five parameter analysis, and cell sorting capability. Flow cytometry is an important tool for interdisciplinary research on the dynamics of microbial populations and biogenic particles that participate in the cycling and flux of major elements in aquatic ecosystems of the land-sea margin. Flow cytometry was originally developed as a tool to analyze individual cells or biological particles in cellular biology and clinical research. It has more recently found wide applications in aquatic biology, because it can provide a level of temporal and spatial resolution of the abundance and characteristics of biogenic and non-biological particles in aquatic systems that no other current technology can match. This level of resolution is currently needed to complement largescale models of elements cycling in estuaries and oceans, where the distribution and characteristics of biological particles are the key factors that determine the fats and flux of essential chemical components. Thus, flow cytometry is no longer a technology restricted to clinical studies, but can profitably complement other techniques routinely used in aquatic ecology and biochemistry. This proposal represents an attempts to expand the use of flow cytometry in the study of the density, distribution, cellular characteristics, taxomic composition and trophic interactions of biogenic particles in estuaries and continental shelf ecosystems of the middle Atlantic region. The instrument will reside at the Horn Point Environmental Laboratory which has made a major commitment to the study of plankton dynamics, physical oceanography, and physical-biological interactions in estuarine and marine ecosystems. The instrument is extremely versatile and will be used in laboratory-and ship-based studies as well as in laboratory course work. Operation is relatively easy and user-friendly, makin g it an ideal tool not only for ecological research, but also for education.