Speaker: Anitra Ingalls (University of Washington, School of Oceanography) Title: Mass Spectrometers View of Microbial Life on Ocean Worlds Zoom Link: https://washington.zoom.us/my/uwastrobiology Please contact astrobio@uw.edu in advance of the meeting for the password Abstract: Phytoplankton transform inorganic carbon into thousands of biomolecules, including polar metabolites. Yet relatively little is known about the diversity or concentration of polar metabolites within marine plankton. In this talk I will present metabolomes of marine microbial communities and 21 phytoplankton species grown in culture. I will show that bulk community metabolomes reflect the phytoplankton community on a chemical level and that metabolite levels vary with environmental conditions. I will also show results from experiments aimed at understanding the function and fate of select metabolites in the ocean. These findings add to understanding of how the phytoplankton metabolome shapes marine microbial communities, particularly associated heterotrophs whose ability to sense and use these molecules as information, nutrients, or energy sources depends on the presence of substrate-matched enzymatic machinery. This work has the potential to expand our search for biomarkers of life in ocean worlds. |