SGER: A multi-user, combined thermal cycler and microfluorimeter for studies of marine organisms

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This award will enable the purchase of an instrument that combines a rapid thermocycler with a microspectrofluorimeter. This technology allows the quantification of a PCR reaction as it occurs in real time and thus can convert the qualitative results typical of PCR into quantitative ones using the sensitivity and precision of the fluorimeter. Quantitative PCR is emerging as a potentially crucial, but still "risky" technique in the study of marine organisms. The barrier of instrumentation cost has also limited its development as a tool in marine sciences. The researchers will initially use the instrument in the detection of specific microorganisms (free-living photoautotrophs, heterotrophs, symbionts, and pathogens) in the marine environment, with the goal of developing a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms controlling microbial biodiversity. The detection of the genes for various microbial activities such as toxic metal metabolism or nutrient stress responses is a second potential use. Lastly, population genetic studies of eukaryotic marine organisms such as copepods and sea urchins will benefit from the utilization of the proposed instrument. Three laboratories in the Marine Biology Research Division of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, will begin as major users of the instrument (Palenik, Azam and Burton), but use of the instrument will likely extend to several other labs. In all cases the instrument will be valuable in generating results that will open new research directions in marine sciences and provide preliminary results for future NSF proposals.