SeaFlow - a census for the very small

Diversity and interactions among microbial populations are key to the geochemical cycles that maintain Earth's biosphere. Current knowledge of microbial community structure and distribution in the ocean is largely due to the use of flow cytometry, in which microbial cells are injected into a flow of ultra-pure "sheath" fluid and carried past a laser.  The resulting scattered light and fluorescence reveal details of relative cell size and fluorescence emission of individual cells.  Collected continuously at hundreds or thousands of times per second, these single cell measurements can be aggregated into cytometric populations that respond dynamically to changing environmental conditions when analyzed across both time and space.  I will discuss the novel technologies associated with SeaFlow, a new sheathless and continuous flow cytometer developed at the University of Washington, and present datasets and analysis obtained during three years of CANON cruise participation.

Speaker: Jarred Swalell, Univ. of Washington