Week 1: Off to a Fast Start

My name is Maddie Hibshman, and I am working in the Simon lab under the mentorship of Lydie Herfort.  This summer I will be examining the microbial dynamics in the Columbia River Estuary by an autonomous adaptive sampling approach.  Lydie quickly got me acclimated to the work place and gave me an abundance of literature to read up on to obtain a more detailed understanding of my project for the summer.  The Columbia River Estuary is difficult to study due to its inherent variability spatially and temporally; I read in detail about a device called the ESP (environmental sampling processor), which contends to take this variability into account and capture transient, re-occurring events by collecting samples not only at predetermined times, but also when certain predetermined conditions are met, triggering sensors that tell the ESP to begin data collection.  For example, triggers may include specific turbidity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, or salinity values.  In this way, the ESP can monitor biological hotspots that arise due to the dynamic nature of the estuary.  By working in tandem with the observation and prediction system SATURN, gene expression can be examined to better understand if transient estuarine events trigger or inhibit gene expression.  In particular, we are interested in studying ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA); we are looking for a specific gene called amoA, which is a gene for a subunit of ammonia monooxygenase (an enzyme that catalyzes the oxidation of ammonia to hydroxylamine).  This is significant in terms of assessing the role AOA have in global carbon and nitrogen cycling.