Survey of Marine Prokaryotes

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Although prokaryotes are ubiquitous and immensely important in numerous biological processes, the diversity of naturally-occurring marine populations is poorly known. The reasons for this include a general lack of recognizable morphological differences, difficulties in culturability required for standard identification, and questions about proper classification. This project will survey marine planktonic prokaryotes in diverse ocean habitats, including Great Barrier Reef sediments, California kelp beds, marine suspended particles, and a coral reef in Australia. All of the work will classify these microbes by means of 16S rRna gene sequences, where previous study has identified new major groups of archaea, phylum or class-level bacterial groups, and other prokaryotes. New sequences will be compared against a large database of existing sequences representing major lineages of prokaryotes.