Microbiology Commons^™

Relationships Among Prochlorococcus Ecotypes Across Oceanic Temperature Ranges, Jeremy Werner Chandler

Doctoral Dissertations

Prochlorococcus, the world’s smallest known photosynthetic organism, is an open ocean cyanobacterium, thought to be globally significant in nutrient cycling. Genetically and physiologically distinct “ecotypes” of Prochlorococcus populate the world’s subtropical and tropical oceans. A few of these key ecotypes comprise the majority of these populations, with the dominant ecotypes frequently varying as a function of depth and latitude. The mechanisms underlying the specific distributions of the ecotypes remain poorly understood, but temperature was believed to play a key role in latitudinal partitioning. Quantitative PCR (Q-PCR) was used to assess ecotypic abundances across transects spanning the Pacific Ocean from 27°N …