Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

Eukaryotic Gene Expression Patterns Of Microorganisms In The Amazon River Plume Parallel The Biogeochemistry Of Plume Waters, Brian L. Zielinski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Unraveling the microbiological processes that occur as water travels from a river's mouth into the ocean is critical to understanding the role of river plumes in global biogeochemical cycles. Metranscriptomics, the gene expression of a whole community of organisms, was utilized to examine six stations along the Amazon River Plume (ARP) in 2010 to test thehypothesis that there were measurable differences in gene expression for key biogeochemical genes along the ARP. This body of work focuses on methods developed to identify which genes are biogeochemically important for a particular environment along extreme salinity, nutrient and community gradients in the ARP, …