In Situ Incubation and Filtration System for the Pelagic Ocean (InSIncFS)

海洋是一个关键的气候调节器：如果没有它的“生物碳泵”（BCP），大气中的二氧化碳含量至少会是今天的两倍。BCP首先通过光合浮游植物吸收二氧化碳并将其固定在海洋表面的有机碳中，然后将一部分碳转移到海洋深处，在那里被锁定（隔离）数百年。因此，BCP的效率取决于表层浮游植物的生产力，与其他微生物和生物的相互作用，可能会阻碍碳向深海的输送，以及呼吸作用-以固定碳为食物并转化回二氧化碳-在黄昏海洋中，阳光照射的表面和深海之间的关键缓冲区。与此同时，也正是这种植物浮游生物衍生的固定碳为大多数不同的海洋生物提供了食物，并构成了人类享有的许多生态系统服务和粮食安全的基础。在目前快速的气候变化下，海洋变暖和分层限制了表层海洋营养物质的补充，而海水变得更加酸性并失去氧气。后者尤其会刺激甲烷和一氧化二氮等更强烈的温室气体的产生。很明显，准确理解所有这些主要由小型浮游生物和微生物介导的海洋地球化学过程，对于我们预测地球未来变化的能力至关重要。迄今为止，海洋地球化学家和浮游生物生态学家如何评估这些重要过程的活动，主要是基于船上进行的孵化实验：简而言之，从海洋深处取出水和浮游生物的样本，带到船甲板上并放入各种瓶子中，也许添加了用于追踪变化的指示剂化合物（例如稀有同位素13 C和15 N）或可能模拟活动的假设底物（例如铁）。它们被放置在实验室培养箱中，温度与原位深度相似，持续一段时间，以监测化学/生物特性的变化，可能使用屏幕来模拟深水中的光强度。然而，大气压力通常用于非原位孵育，即使样品可能来自100 - 1000米的深度，因此从最初的10到100巴减压到1巴!可以想象，浮游生物/微生物在这种异地孵化期间所经历的条件可能与它们的真实的栖息地有很大不同，因此获得的任何活动测量结果肯定与现实不同。此外，组学分析，特别是RNA的组学分析，最近在研究活性代谢和生物体使用的途径（例如塔拉海洋）方面变得非常有用。然而，浮游生物对变化的反应很快，RNA可以在几秒到几分钟内发生变化，因此它们很可能是在从采样水深到船甲板上收集的过程中发生变化的。尽管有这些人工制品，船上孵育和RNA过滤仍被广泛使用-因为没有其他可行的选择。目前尚不清楚这种充满人工制品的活性测量和RNA谱可能带来多少误差和误解程度，它们目前用于模型中。（InSIncFS）将首次提供一个变革性平台，用于真正的现场活动评估，其中包括集成传感器、大量可能的并行假设驱动实验，和原位RNA保存。它将消除非原位孵育的假象，并纠正先前非原位测定的活性的不准确性。世界上没有这样的制度。InSIncFS将使我们能够真正回答以前无法回答的气候变化问题。它代表了世界级的创新，并为NERC在自主活动感知方面实现净零海洋能力的雄心铺平了道路。

The Ocean is a key climate regulator: Has it not been its 'biological carbon pump' (BCP), atmospheric CO2 would have been at least twice as high as it is today. BCP operates with CO2 firstly absorbed and fixed into organic carbon in the surface ocean by photosynthetic phytoplankton, then a fraction of this carbon is transferred into the deep interior of the ocean where it is locked away (sequestered) for centuries. Hence, the efficiency of BCP relies on the productivity of surface phytoplankton, interactions with other microbes and organisms that might hamper the carbon delivery to the deep, and respiration -feeding on the fixed carbon as food and converted back to CO2- in the twilight ocean, the critical buffer zone between the sunlit surface and the deep ocean. Meanwhile, it is also this phytoplankton-derived fixed carbon that feeds the majority of diverse marine life, and forms the basis of many ecosystem services and food security that humans enjoy. Under current, rapid climate change, ocean warming and stratification limits the replenishment of nutrients in the surface ocean, while seawater becomes more acidic and loses oxygen. The latter especially can stimulate production of even stronger greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide. Clearly, accurate understanding of all these biogeochemical processes, mediated mostly by small plankton and microbes, is critical to our ability to project future changes on our planet.How marine biogeochemists and plankton ecologists have been assessing activity of these important processes to date are mostly based on incubation experiments conducted on shipboard: Briefly, samples of water and resident plankton are taken out from ocean depths, brought onto ship-deck and into various bottles, perhaps with additions of indicator compounds for tracing changes (e.g. rare isotopes 13C and 15N) or hypothesised substrates that might simulate activity (e.g. iron). They are placed in a lab incubator at similar temperature as found at in situ depths for a period of time to monitor changes in chemical/biological properties, possibly with screens to mimic light intensity in deeper water. However, atmospheric pressure is typically used in ex-situ incubations, even though the sample may have come from 100's-1000's m depth, so decompression to 1 bar from originally 10's to 100's bar! As one can imagine, the conditions experienced by the plankton/ microbes during such ex-situ incubations can be vastly different from their real habitats, and any activity measurements thus obtained most certainly differ from reality. Moreover, 'omics analyses, especially those of RNA, have recently become very useful in studying active metabolisms and pathways organisms use (e.g. Tara Oceans). However, plankton respond quickly to changes and RNA can be altered within seconds to minutes, so they have most likely changed during the journey between sampled water depths and the collection on ship-deck.Despite these artefacts, shipboard incubations and RNA filtration are widely used - because there is no other practical option. It is unknown how much error and extent of misunderstanding such artefact-laden activity measurements and RNA profiles might have brought, and they are currently used in models.The proposed In Situ Incubation and Filtration System (InSIncFS) for the pelagic ocean will provide, for the first time, a transformative platform for truly in situ activity assessments with integrated sensors, large array of possible parallel hypothesis-driven experiments, and in situ RNA-preservation. It will eliminate the artefacts of ex situ incubations, and correct for the inaccuracies of activities previously determined ex situ. No such system exists in the world. InSIncFS will enable us to truly answer questions on climate change that has not been possible before. It represents world-class innovation and paves the way toward NERC's ambition of Net Zero Oceanographic Capability on autonomous activity sensing.