TITLE:

DISSERTATION PROPOSAL–A METAGENOMIC EXAMINATION OF A SOLAR SALTERN IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (No. 153)

DATE:

Friday, March 29th, 2007

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 214

SPEAKER:

Beltran Rodriguez Brito, Computational Science Research Center, San Diego State University

ABSTRACT:

Introduction Solar salterns are natural or man-made structures composed of several conjoined pools with progressively increasing concentrations of salt, used to extract several mineral salts from water. The biota of the pools changes as salinity rises, starting with close similarity to a marine microbial community and progressively becoming a halophilic ecosystem. The community goes from being Bacteria-dominated to be a halophilic-Archaeal community with lower diversity but higher population density. In this environment, taking advantage of many environmental changes in a small area, microbial and viral populations are studied. Methods employed include wet-lab methods for DNA extraction and population quantification and identification and a plethora of bioinformatics methods, many of them developed for this project. Models and techniques to identify and compare community structure for both the microbial and viral metagenomic samples are discussed, as well as procedures to profile and compare community metabolism. Challenges in the analysis, interpretation, and visualization of this varied and massive array of data are discussed along with potential solutions, completing the outline of the proposal.

HOST:

Forest Rohwer

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