The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Emily K. Prince to work with Dr. Georg Pohnert at Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany.
Organisms may interact with their community by increasing the production of compounds in order defend against predation, attract mates, kill competitors, avoid pathogens, establish symbiosis, etc. Assessing these changes can be difficult, but assuming constant production of compounds provides an incomplete picture of how organisms interact. Marine diatoms in the Pseudo-nitzschia genus increase the production of the neurotoxic compound domoic acid in response to the presence of other organisms, making this ecologically and economically important species a good model for understanding how planktonic organisms respond chemically to their environment. Like other harmful algal blooms, blooms of Pseudo-nitzschia are linked to deleterious effects on human and ecosystem health. Because these blooms are increasing worldwide, and represent an increasing global threat to fisheries and coastal tourism, understanding factors that regulate Pseudo-nitzchia metabolism and toxin production is crucial. Pseudo-nitzschia spp. likely detect and respond to other members of the community by modulating the production of specific compounds, resulting in altered ecological interactions. This project has three primary objectives. The first is to determine changes in the metabolic profile of Pseudo-nitzschia in response to competitors and associated bacteria, using UPLC-ToF MS and GC-ToF MS to create metabolic profiles, and HPLC, GC, and NMR to identify specific compounds. The second objective is to characterize of the mechanism of by which domoic acid increases in response to members of the community. The final objective of this project is to determine the ecological relevance of changes to Pseudo-nitzschia's metabolic profile by testing how changes in the production of specific compounds and overall metabolic profile effect competing phytoplankton and associated bacteria.
