Meta-Barcoding

The scooping pond water and instantly knowing every fish, frog, insect, algae, and microbe living there. Metabarcoding makes this possible by reading environmental DNA (eDNA) from a single sample.It includes the following steps, Collect water, soil, or air. Extract…

Over the past days, my posts have explored different ways ecologists study life: traits, long-term ecological research, meta-analyses, and imaging methods. Each one showed me a different angle on biodiversity. Now, I want to introduce metabarcoding which adds a…

Before today’s class I always had it in mind that the only beneficial organisms in the ocean are the bigger animals. Never have I thought that tiny microbes in the ocean actually carry such a role in carbon fixation. The interactions between microbes and…

Marine microbes are central to the ocean’s role in regulating Earth’s carbon balance. Through the lens of ecological physiology, we can examine how these organisms respond to environmental conditions while driving essential biochemical processes. From sunlit surface…

The journey of carbon in the ocean begins with phytoplankton, which capture carbon dioxide and convert it into organic matter such as glycans. These glycans then become a key link in the system, transferring carbon to microbial communities. Microbes process this…

Today’s lesson felt like opening the black box of the ocean’s carbon engine, a world where phytoplankton, glycans, and marine fungi quietly shape the fate of carbon across entire ocean basins. We explored a central debate in marine biogeochemistry: Is most carbon…

Today’s lesson really changed how I think about the ocean, not just as water with organisms in it, but as a massive, invisible system where carbon is constantly moving and being transformed. What stood out most is how something as small as phytoplankton connects…

Marine microbes are closely connected to the global carbon cycle. Phytoplankton fix carbon dioxide and convert it into organic matter, including complex glycans. These glycans are then used by specialized microbes, which break them down and help recycle carbon through…

In today’s lesson, we learned how closely marine microbes, phytoplankton, and complex carbohydrates called glycans are connected to the global carbon cycle. Phytoplankton produce organic carbon through photosynthesis, which peaks during seasonal phytoplankton…

Have you ever wondered how ecologists can identify hundreds of species from a single scoop of soil or a bottle of seawater? The answer often lies in metabarcoding. This technique is changing how we study biodiversity, especially in environments where sampling is…