Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution receives $5M grant for microbe research

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researchers received a $5.2 million grant to pursue three studies on marine microbes and their relationships to nutrients in seawater, according to a WHOI press release.

A study by Dan Repeta, a WHOI chemist, and Ed DeLong, an MIT engineering professor, will develop a system to analyze how microbes relate to cycling dissolved organic matter in sections of nutrient-poor ocean.

WHOI chemist Elizabeth Kujawinski will develop protocols to detect microbes’ consumption of nutrients in seawater.

The final study will look at how microbial communication through infochemicals affects their interactions with nutrients in the Northern Atlantic.  The grant is courtesy of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Image:

Image: Chemist Tracy Mincer (left) and biologist Matt Johnson (right) are among several WHOI researchers who received funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Marine Microbiology Initiative. (Credit: Tom Kleindinst/WHOI)