Sizing Marine Microbes With Scattered Light

用散射光测定海洋微生物的大小

• 批准号: 1029321
• 负责人: Jules Jaffe
• 金额: $ 31.45万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego Scripps Inst of Oceanography
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-01-01 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1029321&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Sizing; Marine; Microbes; Scattered; Light

One of the most significant revolutions in the marine sciences in recent decades has been the characterization of the fundamental role that microbes play in both oceanic and global ecology. However, despite their significance, the assessment of population size spectra, considered to be an important character of marine ecosystems, has been problematic. The issue is compounded by the fact that more than 90% of marine microbes cannot be cultured. Over the last decade, Dr. Jaffe has been working on a next generation of instruments that show promise to characterize marine microbes using visible light. The central idea of the new instrument takes advantage of the fact that the light that is scattered at the non-forward angles contains information about the smallest spatial structures in the object. Since this light is not a major component of the light imaged in conventional optical microscopy, features of conventional images are insensitive to structures smaller than ~ 1 µm. Although more advanced methods can exceed this criteria, their use in a routine manner to size marine microbial populations is not straightforward. The PI requests funding to develop a new type of light microscope that can be used to characterize particles that are smaller than the wavelength of light. A successful demonstration that light microscopy can be used to systematically characterize sub-wavelength particles in the routine manner described here would be a significant milestone in the development of optical methods. As such, other fields of inquiry, such as cellular biology, would benefit from this methodology as the routine inference of sub wavelength cell structure has important ramifications for cell sorting, understanding cellular structure, as well as cell pathology.Broader Impacts:The proposed optical system and analysis methods could broadly impact marine microbial ecology, bio-optical oceanography, and potentially extend to other fields such as biomedicine. The project specifically contributes to graduate education/training through support of a PhD student. Outreach to high-school applications is also outlined. But most importantly, the potential project outcomes can be used in a broad range of other biological and marine-physics fields which employ optical methods to deal with very small objects.

近几十年来，海洋科学中最重要的革命之一是微生物在海洋和全球生态中发挥的基本作用。然而，尽管它们的意义，人口规模谱的评估，被认为是海洋生态系统的一个重要特征，一直存在问题。90%以上的海洋微生物无法培养，这一事实使问题更加复杂。在过去的十年里，Jaffe博士一直致力于下一代仪器的研究，这些仪器有望利用可见光来表征海洋微生物。新仪器的中心思想利用了这样一个事实，即以非前向角度散射的光包含有关物体中最小空间结构的信息。由于这种光不是传统光学显微镜成像光的主要组成部分，因此传统图像的特征对小于1 µm的结构不敏感。虽然更先进的方法可以超过这一标准，但以常规方式使用它们来确定海洋微生物种群的大小并不简单。PI要求资助开发一种新型的光学显微镜，可用于表征小于光波长的颗粒。一个成功的证明，光学显微镜可以用来系统地表征亚波长粒子在这里描述的常规方式将是一个重要的里程碑，在光学方法的发展。因此，其他领域的调查，如细胞生物学，将受益于这种方法，因为亚波长细胞结构的常规推断对细胞分选，理解细胞结构以及细胞pathology.Broader影响：拟议的光学系统和分析方法可能会广泛影响海洋微生物生态学，生物光学海洋学，并可能扩展到其他领域，如生物医学。该项目通过一名博士生的支持，特别有助于研究生教育/培训。还概述了对高中应用程序的推广。但最重要的是，潜在的项目成果可用于广泛的其他生物和海洋物理学领域，这些领域采用光学方法来处理非常小的物体。