Tiny MIT ecosystem may shed light on clim... ( CAMBRIDGE Mass. MIT researchers have...)

Tiny MIT ecosystem may shed light on climate change

Date:12/15/2008

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. MIT researchers have created a microbial ecosystem smaller than a stick of gum that sheds new light on the plankton-eat-plankton world at the bottom of the aquatic food chain.

The work, reported in the January print issue of American Naturalist, may lead to better predictions of marine microbes' global-scale influence on climate.

Through photosynthesis and uptake of carbon compounds, diverse planktonic marine microorganisms too small to be seen with the naked eye help regulate carbon flux in the oceans. Carbon flux refers to the rate at which energy and carbon are transferred from lower to higher levels of the marine food web, and it may have implications for commercial fisheries and other ocean-dependent industries.

The MIT study is one of the first detailed explorations of how sea creatures so small 500,000 can fit on the head of a pin find food in an ocean-size environment.

Besides showing that microbes' swimming and foraging is much more sophisticated and complex than previously thought, the work also indicates that organic materials may move through the oceans' microbial food web at higher-than-expected rates, via a domino effect of resource patch formation and exploitation, said co-author Justin R. Seymour, postdoctoral fellow in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE).

Using the new technology of microfluidics, Seymour and colleagues Roman Stocker, the Doherty Assistant Professor of Ocean Utilization in CEE, and MIT mechanical engineering graduate student Marcos devised a clear plastic device about the size and shape of a microscope slide.

Depending on the organism being studied, nutrients or prey are injected with a syringe-based pump into the device's microfluidic channel, which is 45 mm long, 3 mm wide and 50 micrometers deep. "While relying on different swimming strategies, all three organisms exhibited behaviors which permitted efficient and
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Contact: Elizabeth Thomson
thomson@mit.edu
617-258-5402
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Source:Eurekalert

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