Project description:Marine microalgae (phytoplankton) mediate almost half of the worldwide photosynthetic carbon dioxide fixation and therefore play a pivotal role in global carbon cycling, most prominently during massive phytoplankton blooms. Phytoplankton biomass consists of considerable proportions of polysaccharides, substantial parts of which are rapidly remineralized by heterotrophic bacteria. We analyzed the diversity, activity and functional potential of such polysaccharide-degrading bacteria in different size fractions during a diverse spring phytoplankton bloom at Helgoland Roads (southern North Sea) at high temporal resolution using microscopic, physicochemical, biodiversity, metagenome and metaproteome analyses.
Project description:To determine the optimal RNA-Seq approach for animal host-bacterial symbiont analysis, we compared transcriptome bias, depth and coverage achieved by two different mRNA capture and sequencing strategies applied to the marine demosponge Amphimedon queenslandica holobiont, for which genomes of the animal host and three most abundant bacterial symbionts are available.
