Comprehensive regional diagnosis of marine microorganisms using DNA testing

This is a breakthrough technology that researchers will be able to use to diagnose conditions at the bottom of marine food webs that can affect the abundance of important commercial fish or produce harmful algal blooms

The research team published the findings in the May 4 issue of the journal Nature Communications

"This is the ecological sampling method of the future," said lead author Chase James, a graduate student in oceanography at Scripps and a JCVI researcher

This new method of assessing marine microbial communities -- a collection of microbial plants, animals and other organisms that live in a specific habitat -- greatly improves scientists' ability to diagnose the ocean

James likened the process to scanning the barcodes of all the products in the grocery store to get their inventory

This method is an improvement over traditional techniques, such as light microscopy, to capture common sentinel species in seawater or to measure volume metrics, such as chlorophyll content in water

CalCOFI was established after World War II to help officials and the fishing industry understand what caused the sudden decline of sardines on the West Coast

"It's interesting that 70 years ago, CalCOFI couldn't even imagine that you could sample two liters of seawater and get comprehensive data on the marine microbial community,

Study co-authors include Lisa Ziegler Allen, Robert Lamp, Ariel Rabbins, Anne Schulberg, and Andrew Allen, with Scripps Oceanography and JCVI Joint Appointments; Andrew Barton, Scripps Oceanography and UC San Diego Department of Biological Sciences; Hong Zheng, JCVI; Ralph Glick, Scripps Oceanography; and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Kelly Goodwin of the Authority's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and the Southwest Fisheries Science Center

Journal Reference :

1. Chase C.