Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Ellis Island Effect: Invasive Species In The Mid-Atlantic, Paul A.X. Bologna

Sustainability Seminar Series

Global invasions of marine species often follow human migration pathways and primary commerce routes. Exploration, immigration, and commerce to the United States has created hot spots for invasive species to become established. In particular, Ellis Island served as a primary spot for European immigrants over the last century. During the last 3 years, we have documented for the first time four non-native hydrozoans in New Jersey using molecular techniques.

Gonionemusvertens, Moerisiainkermanica, and Bougainvilliatriestinahave origins potentially linked to the Mediterranean indicating a potential group invasion from that region. Aequoreaaustralisis a Pacific hydrozoan whose origin pathway is yet unknown, but has now …

Using The Oxford Nanopore Minion (A Portable Dna Sequencer) For Microbial Ecology, Lee Kerkhof

Sustainability Seminar Series

An approach utilizing the MinIon to sequence bacterial ribosomal operons within natural samples has been developed. Bacterial rRNA operons were amplified from 6 samples employing a mixture of farm soil and bioreactor DNA in known concentrations. Replicate extraction/amplifications (n=4) yielded over 10,000 2D sequences which were analyzed using a simplified data analysis pipeline based on NCBI Blast and assembly with Geneious software. The method could detect over 1000 operational taxonomic units in a quantitative manner. An iterative assembly scheme was developed to re- construct those rRNA operons with > 30x coverage from 30 OTUs among the Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, Firmicutes, and …