Research Summary
Phytoplankton are microscopic marine algae that fuel the ocean food web and influence the Earth’s carbon cycle. As Canada Research Chair in Marine Microbial Macroecology, Dr. Zoe Finkel is shedding light on how marine phytoplankton respond to environmental change.
She and her research team are developing a framework to link the phytoplankton macromolecular machinery (proteins, RNA, DNA, lipids and carbohydrates) to growth rate and elemental composition (carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus). They are conducting lab experiments on ecologically important phytoplankton taxa, a complementary set of bioinformatic analyses to identify gene expression markers associated with growth rate, and macromolecular and elemental analyses of field samples taken from a range of ocean biomes. They will use the resulting measurements to test and improve emerging macromolecular models of the ocean’s carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Ultimately, their findings will be used to improve the next generation of ocean ecosystem models.