Marine bacterioplankton comprise the largest living surface area in the sea. They detect, transport, and assimilate bioreactive constituents from the dissolved organic carbon pool, transforming them to particulate matter or recycling them back to an inorganic form. Ruegeria pomeroyi DSS-3 was isolated in 1998 from southeastern U.S. coastal seawater and has become a model organism for studies of carbon cycling. This project would leverage an existing model organism system based on the marine Roseobacter Ruegeria (formerly Silicibacter) pomeroyi DSS-3 to improve understanding of the genetic basis of bacterial DOC cycling in the ocean.
Proposer’s Name: Mary Ann Moran