Microbe Week Takes Over at the Oceanographic Center, Begins April 11

Nova Southeastern University’s Oceanographic Center (NSU-OC) is highlighting the symbiotic relationship between microbes and coral reefs this week through a series of distinguished speaker events and conference presentations. The week’s events kick off on Thursday, April 11 with “Dive In” lecture series guest speaker Kim Ritchie, a microbiologist with the Mote Marine Lab, who will speak about “Mutualistic Interactions in Corals: Small, Smaller, Smallest.”

On Friday, April 12, NSU-OC will host the next Quality Enhancement Program featuring Professor Forest Rohwer from San Diego State University speaking on “Microbes and Coral Reefs,” followed by a dinner reception. Finally, NSU-OC scholarship student and Professor Jose Lopez will present the NSU-OC’s work on marine microbiology at the Florida Branch of the American Society of Microbiology’s annual meeting in Islamorada.

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For more information on the “Dive In” series, visit: http://nova.edu/ocean/divein/index.html

The lecture will begin at 6:00 p.m. in the auditorium at the new Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Ecosystems Research at NSU’s Oceanographic Center. Light refreshments will follow.

RSVP is not necessary, but seating is limited. For more information, please email Dive-in@list.nova.edu, or call (954) 262-3678.

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Quality Enhancement Program – “Microbes and Coral Reefs”

Professor Forest Rohwer

San Diego State University

http://coralreefsystems.org/content/forest-rohwer

Friday April 12, 6:00 p.m.

RSVP to Julio Perez oconline@nova.edu

COE Auditorium

Followed by reception dinner for all in the COE cafe

With the convergence of growing incidences of marine disease, warmer sea surface temperatures, pollution, and better biotechnology to detect and characterize marine microbes, Dr Rohwer’s research becomes highly relevant.  Besides numerous publications in major journals, he has written the popular book Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas, that describes his personal journey in marine biology and microbiology.

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For more information on the Florida Branch of the American Society of Microbiology annual meeting, visit: http://www.flasm.org/. Information on the NSU-OC faculty/student presentation is below:

Prokaryotic Diversity of the Broward and Hollywood Wastewater Outfalls, Associated Reef Tracts, and Inlets

Alexandra Campbell*, Nova Southeastern University, Dania Beach, FL 33008

Jose V. Lopez, Nova Southeastern University, Dania Beach, FL 33008

Christopher Sinigalliano, NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Miami, FL 33149

Over 90% of the microbial life is uncultivable, yet these microbes form the fundamental structure and function of many ecosystems. Wastwater treatments are intended to kill most microorganisms present. Culture experiments with indicator bacteria show equivocal results of the treatment process, including the survival of some microbial DNA. The objective of this experiment was to characterize the prokaryotic communities of the wastewater outfalls and associated reef tracts of Broward County and Hollywood, FL by site and season.

This experiment utilized high throughput NGS sequencing of 16S rRNA amplicon libraries to understand the complex microbiota of the wastewater outfalls. Quantitative Insights into Microbial Ecology (QIIME) was used to analyze the sequence data.  The mean number of sequences was about 3253/library with 6051 operational taxonomic units (OTU). Taxa generated from QIIME were found using the Greengenes and Ribosomal Database Project (RDP) databases. Dominant taxa consisted mainly of phyla Proteobacteria and Cyanobacteria. Data collected from this pilot study can be expanded to long-term monitoring and incorporated as a part of the Earth Microbiome Project (www.earthmicrobiome.org), which is aimed at characterizing prokaryotic communities in various environments and establishing a gene atlas of each environment.

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