Molecular microbial oceanography
Project Manager/Lead Scientist: Ed DeLong

Microbes critically impact and mediate nearly every major biogeochemical cycle on Earth. Microbial interactions that occur on the scale of microns can regulate global ocean processes on planetary wide scales. Although general procedures to detect, identify and functionally characterize and quantify microbial species and their activities in the marine environment are improving, they are still relatively crude, and lack resolution and sensitivity. 

Ed DeLong’s lab will investigate microbes that contain a novel type of CO2-fixing enzyme, the nature and diversity of novel bacteriochlorophyll and rhodopsin-containing bacteria, anerobic methane oxidation in marine sediments, and the role of Archaea in deep ocean waters worldwide. To facilitate these studies, they will use genomic data to design and construct DNA microarrays for monitoring the composition and activities of marine microbes.