Exploratory Research on Marine Micro-Eukaryote Community Structure Using ion-Pair Reversed Phase HPLC

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Food web dynamics of benthic and pelagic ecosystems are driven, in large part, by communities of prokaryotes and micro-eukaryotes. The phylogenetic diversity of the micro-eukaryotes range from protists to various adult and larval stages of invertebrates. Many of these species are difficult to identify due to their inability to grow in culture media or due to their indistinguishable characteristics. Molecular techniques have been instrumental in unraveling the complexities and activities of these communities. The purpose of this research is to explore the use of ion-paired reversed phase (IP-RP) UPLC for nucleic acid fragment analysis, which is a system that is successfully used in biomedical research. If this technique is adaptable to marine research, the time required to identify and quantify populations will be reduced from days to minutes. IP-RP HPLC will be tested with four diverse research programs: presence of uncultured fungal populations in marine habitats; distribution of plant and animal pathogenic bacteria and fungi in African dust; community structure of copepod larvae in the Florida Bay food web, and genetic dispersal of Caribbean corals and reef fishes.