Abstract
Abstract. The study of marine microorganisms using molecular biological techniques is now widespread in the ocean sciences. These techniques target nucleic acids which record the evolutionary history of microbes, and encode for processes which are active in the ocean today. Molecular techniques can form the basis of remote instrumentation sensing technologies for marine microbial diversity and ecological function. Here we review some of the most commonly used molecular biological techniques. These techniques include the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and reverse-transcriptase PCR, quantitative PCR, whole assemblage "fingerprinting" approaches (based on nucleic acid sequence or length heterogeneity), oligonucleotide microarrays, and high-throughput shotgun sequencing of whole genomes and gene transcripts, which can be used to answer biological, ecological, evolutionary and biogeochemical questions in the ocean sciences. Moreover, molecular biological approaches may be deployed on ocean sensor platforms and hold promise for tracking of organisms or processes of interest in near-real time.
Highlights
The biology of the oceans is recorded in the genetic material of organisms and viruses
The function of organisms is determined by the expression of genes into ribonucleic acids, messenger messenger RNA (mRNA), which is translated into proteins by the ribosome
Some gene sequences accumulate fewer mutations than others, since the activity of the proteins or structure of the ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) has specific structural requirements that are sensitive to substitutions of key amino acids or ribonucleotides
Summary
The biology of the oceans is recorded in the genetic material of organisms and viruses. Some gene sequences accumulate fewer mutations than others, since the activity of the proteins or structure of the rRNA has specific structural requirements that are sensitive to substitutions of key amino acids or ribonucleotides. Some methods are useful for characterizing overall community assemblage diversity, while others can be used to determine the abundance of microorganisms, or specific enzymatic activities (Fig. 1). The goal of this overview is to acquaint the nonspecialist with the breadth of molecular biology techniques, in order to provide the scope and vision for how molecular biological techniques may be ported to oceansensing technology, in situ
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