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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Controls On Benthic Microbial Community Structure And Assembly In A Karstic Coastal Wetland, Nicholas O. Schulte
Controls On Benthic Microbial Community Structure And Assembly In A Karstic Coastal Wetland, Nicholas O. Schulte
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The assembly mechanisms underlying microbial community abundance, biotic interactions, and diversity over space and time are unresolved, particularly in benthic microbial mats distributed along environmental gradients. Experimental enrichment of nutrient-limited microbial mats from the Florida Everglades along a nutrient subsidy-salinity stress gradient stimulated autotrophic and heterotrophic metabolism, growth, and diversity independent of autotroph-heterotroph interactions across treatments and space. These results suggest spatial segregation of autotrophic and heterotrophic components within mats. Considering only the diatom component of Everglades mats over space and time, the subsidy-stress gradient controlled diatom compositional turnover at broad spatial scales while environmental and dispersal-based processes structured diatom …
Real-Time Qpcr Assay Development For Detection Of Bacillus Thuringiensis And Serratia Marcescens Dna And The Influence Of Complex Microbial Community Dna On Assay Sensitivity, Jonathan Segal
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (real-time qPCR) assays are an effective technique to detect biological warfare agents and surrogate organisms. In my study, primers were designed to detect chromosomal DNA of biological warfare agent surrogates B. thuringiensis and S. marcescens (representing B. anthracis and Y. pestis, respectively) via real-time qPCR. Species-level specificity of the primers was demonstrated through comparisons with a bacterial strain panel and corroborated by qPCR data. Additionally, the primer efficacy was tested when template DNA was spiked into metagenomic DNA extracted from clinical lung microbiome samples. The results showed that while detection of B. thuringiensis or …