Collaborative Research: Multiple Analytical Window Electrochemical Techniques and Meta-Omics Applied to Studies of Iron Recycling and Iron-Binding Ligands in the Ocean

铁（Fe）作为海洋中限制性微量营养素的重要性是一个相对较新的发现。虽然在理解海洋铁循环方面取得了重大进展，但由于其生物地球化学的复杂性和海洋中铁的低浓度，完整的描述仍然难以捉摸。该项目资助的研究旨在提高我们对海水中铁的化学形式的理解。这将首先通过改进一种新颖的、选择性的电化学分析方法来观察海水中自然浓度的铁，然后将结果数据与微生物群落的基因组成联系起来，这些微生物群落负责产生控制海洋中铁的命运和化学形态的有机分子。我们现在知道，铁对生物群落来说是一种非常重要的微量营养素，这种将基因组和分析数据联系起来的新方法有可能提供重要的见解，这将大大推进海洋中铁成分的研究。该项目还将支持斯克里普斯海洋学研究所的两名研究生，他们都参加了由斯克里普斯伯奇水族馆发起的一项新的六年级拓展计划。铁作为海洋中的一种限制性微量营养素的重要性已经成为一个热门的研究课题，并且在该领域已经取得了许多进展。然而，由于电化学分析技术的精度不足，对海水中铁形态的表征仍然很宽泛。竞争配体交换-吸附阴极溶出伏安法（cl - acsv）是研究海水中铁形态的常用技术。本研究试图通过在多个分析窗口（MAW）上应用CLE-ACSV来改进该方法，以提高铁结合配体光谱的强端和弱端分辨率。此外，通过将这项技术的数据与常驻微生物群落的宏基因组组成数据相关联，这项工作应该能够在产生有机配体的微生物群落之间建立有意义的联系，我们现在知道有机配体在海洋中主导铁的形态、溶解度和吸收。这项研究有可能对目前对海水中铁循环的理解做出重大贡献，它将帮助我们更好地理解更大的全球海洋生物地球化学过程，这些过程控制着铁的分布和可用性及其对全球生产力的控制。

The importance of iron (Fe) as a limiting micronutrient in the ocean is a relatively new discovery. And while critical advances have been made in understanding the marine iron cycle, a full description remains elusive due to its biogeochemical complexity and the low concentrations of iron in the ocean. The research funded in this project seeks to advance our understanding of the chemical forms of Fe in seawater. This will be done by first refining a novel, selective electrochemical analytical method for looking at Fe at natural concentrations in seawater and then relating the resulting data to the genetic composition of the microbial communities responsible for creating the organic molecules that control the fate and chemical form of Fe in the ocean. We now know that iron is an incredibly important micronutrient to biological communities, and this new approach of linked genomic and analytical data has the potential to provide important insights that will significantly advance the study of iron composition in the ocean. This project will also support two graduate students at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, both participating in a new outreach program with 6th graders initiated by the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. The importance of iron as a limiting micronutrient in the ocean has become a topic of avid research, and there have been many advances in the field. However, characterizations of iron speciation in seawater are still broad by nature due to the lack of precision in the electrochemical analytical techniques. Competitive ligand exchange - adsorptive cathodic stripping voltammetry (CLE-ACSV) has been a commonly used technique to study iron speciation in seawater. This research seeks to improve this method by applying CLE-ACSV at multiple analytical windows (MAW) to increase resolution at the strong and weak ends of the iron-binding ligand spectrum. Additionally, by relating data from this technique to data on the metagenomic composition of the resident microbial community, the work should be able to make meaningful connections between the microbial communities that produce the organic ligands that we now know dominate iron speciation, solubility, and uptake in the ocean. This research has the potential to make a significant contribution to the current understanding of iron cycling in seawater, and it will help us to better understand the larger global ocean biogeochemical processes that control the distribution and availability of iron and its controls on global productivity.