Extraction and Analysis of DNA from Phytoplankton Samples Acquired Offshore the Outer Banks of North Carolina (2016–2018)

摘要

The Phytoplankton Club of First Flight High School (FFHS) has been collecting and examining phytoplankton samples from tow samples collected at two sites on the Outer Banks of North Carolina since 2005. In recent years, ecologists have acknowledged that multicellular organisms carry specific host microbiomes; bacterial communities that are likely to be important in their development and metabolic capabilities. In 2016, students began extracting DNA from a subset of the samples in order to assess the microbial community associated with particular phytoplankton using high-throughput DNA sequencing of marker genes. This paper will describe these analyses and present preliminary findings.