Marine bacteria play a key role in global biogeochemical cycles and have become the objects of intense scientific study and innovation. In recognition of the rapid progress and potential in this research arena, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has recently made awards to a number of leading marine microbiologists. Oregon State University's High Throughput Culturing Laboratory has been highly successful culturing many novel, numerically dominant oceanic microorganisms for the first time. In collaboration with the Moore Foundation and the J. Craig Venter Institute, the genomes from 23 of these isolates are now being sequenced. Integrated studies are being planned that involve the genome sequences from these marine microorganisms, large environmental DNA shotgun sequence data sets, and shotgun partial proteome sequencing by mass spectrometry.  

Graduate student Larry Wilhelm (left) and senior research assistant Kevin Vergin (right) collect seawater off the Oregon Coast aboard the R/V Elakha (Photo by Joshua Kitner).

Some fundamental scientific questions being addressed are: 1) what biochemical and genetic adaptations allow these organisms to replicate in the extremely low nutrient conditions of the ocean surface; 2) what forms of dissolved organic carbon and other nutrients are used by these organisms; and 3) how does light influence nutrient cycling efficiency in heterotrophic species that possess auxiliary phototrophic systems?  Some of the approaches being employed to address these questions are cultivation of cells in natural seawater, proteomics by mass spectrometry, comparative genome analysis, and ecological studies of microbial distributions and activity in the oceans.   Faculty from the OSU Department of Chemistry, the Center for Gene Research and Biotechnology and the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences are collaborators on this project.