Coastal Bacterioplankton Systematics: A High Throughput Culturing Approach

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A grant has been awarded to Drs. Stephen Giovannoni and Michael Rappe to survey, inventory, grow and describe new species of marine bacteria from coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest. Previous studies of gene sequences from seawater DNA have provided compelling proof that many species of marine microorganisms are virtually unknown, probably because technologies in routine use in microbiological laboratories do not provide the conditions these cells need to replicate. This project will employ a new technology developed at Oregon State University that miniaturizes and automates the process of culturing microbial cells from nature. This new technology uses concentrations of cells and nutrients that are approximately 100,000 fold lower than those used by the culturing technologies now in routine use. Specifically, this survey will sample oceanic waters off coastal Oregon, within a rectangle described by the coordinates 44 degrees 12' to 45 deg. 02' N; 124 deg. 03' to 124 deg. 38' W. Samples will be taken from throughout the water column at depths ranging to 200 m. In addition to supporting research that isolates and identifies new strains of microorganisms, and inventories them, this project will support the maintenance of a culturing facility that will distribute cell cultures or genomic DNA to other laboratories for further study. Properties of the newly cultured species of cells such as their physical size, genome size, abundance and distribution in Oregon coastal seawater, the nutrients they use and the metabolic pathways that operate in them, will be studied to determine their relationship to other microorganisms, and those strains that are new to science will be named.This project will provide new knowledge about microbial biodiversity in the exceptionally productive coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest. The resulting cultures of microorganisms and information about them will fill gaps in basic knowledge about coastal ecological processes. The cultures themselves will also be a resource for academic and industrial scientists who seek to develop new agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals from microbial biodiversity.