Unicellular picocyanobacteria are ubiquitously distributed in the world’s oceans and play an important role as primary producers.  Despite their small cell diameters (e.g. < 2.0 mm), many are well adapted to the prevailing light field in the photic zone by their pigment composition. Often picocyanobacterial due to their small cell diameters are considered to not contribute greatly to carbon export. However, many picocyanobacterial form large colonies (100’s-1000 mms) and enter ínto symbiosis with diverse eukaryotes, and thus exist across several orders of magnitude, and vary in their contribution to C export. Size fractionated meta-barcoding studies using the 16S rRNA gene have been performed on samples collected over several seasons in the Baltic Sea and in sediment trap collections.

The goal of this project is to study the diversity of the pico-cyanobacteria in both the surface and trap samples as it relates to the season and environmental conditions. A second objective will be to determine the genotypic diversity of colonial pico-cyanobacteria cells collected from the wild using laser microdissection and single cell genomics.

The project requires an interest in both field and lab based work, and method development.

Contact

For more information about the position please contact:

Dr. Rachel A Foster
rachel.foster@su.se