Sizing Marine Microbes With Scattered Light

用散射光测定海洋微生物的大小

• 批准号: 1029321
• 负责人: Jules Jaffe
• 金额: $ 31.45万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego Scripps Inst of Oceanography
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-01-01 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1029321&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Sizing; Marine; Microbes; Scattered; Light

One of the most significant revolutions in the marine sciences in recent decades has been the characterization of the fundamental role that microbes play in both oceanic and global ecology. However, despite their significance, the assessment of population size spectra, considered to be an important character of marine ecosystems, has been problematic. The issue is compounded by the fact that more than 90% of marine microbes cannot be cultured. Over the last decade, Dr. Jaffe has been working on a next generation of instruments that show promise to characterize marine microbes using visible light. The central idea of the new instrument takes advantage of the fact that the light that is scattered at the non-forward angles contains information about the smallest spatial structures in the object. Since this light is not a major component of the light imaged in conventional optical microscopy, features of conventional images are insensitive to structures smaller than ~ 1 µm. Although more advanced methods can exceed this criteria, their use in a routine manner to size marine microbial populations is not straightforward. The PI requests funding to develop a new type of light microscope that can be used to characterize particles that are smaller than the wavelength of light. A successful demonstration that light microscopy can be used to systematically characterize sub-wavelength particles in the routine manner described here would be a significant milestone in the development of optical methods. As such, other fields of inquiry, such as cellular biology, would benefit from this methodology as the routine inference of sub wavelength cell structure has important ramifications for cell sorting, understanding cellular structure, as well as cell pathology.Broader Impacts:The proposed optical system and analysis methods could broadly impact marine microbial ecology, bio-optical oceanography, and potentially extend to other fields such as biomedicine. The project specifically contributes to graduate education/training through support of a PhD student. Outreach to high-school applications is also outlined. But most importantly, the potential project outcomes can be used in a broad range of other biological and marine-physics fields which employ optical methods to deal with very small objects.

近几十年来，海洋科学中最重要的革命之一是微生物在海洋和全球生态学中扮演的基本作用的表征。然而，尽管它们具有重要意义，但人口大小光谱的评估被认为是海洋生态系统的重要特征，这是有问题的。这个问题是由于无法培养超过90％的海洋微生物的事实加剧了问题。在过去的十年中，Jaffe博士一直在研究下一代乐器，这些乐器有望使用可见光来表征海洋微生物。新仪器的核心思想利用了以下事实：散布在非前方角的光包含有关物体中最小的空间结构的信息。由于该光不是传统光学显微镜中成像的光的主要组成部分，因此常规图像的特征对小于〜1 µm的结构不敏感。尽管更高级的方法可以超过此标准，但它们以常规方式使用尺寸的海洋微生物种群并不简单。 PI要求资金开发一种新型的光显微镜，该显微镜可用于表征比光波长小的颗粒。成功的演示表明光学显微镜可用于系统地以常规方式来系统地表征次波长颗粒，这将是光学方法发展的重要里程碑。因此，其他探究领域（例如细胞生物学）将从这种方法中受益，因为子波长细胞结构的常规推断具有重要的分析，了解细胞分类，理解细胞结构以及细胞病理学。Broader的影响：拟议的光学系统和分析方法可以广泛地影响海洋生态学，生物学的生态学，并扩展到其他领域，以扩展到其他潜在的海洋。该项目通过支持博士生的支持为研究生教育/培训做出了贡献。还概述了对高中应用的宣传。但最重要的是，潜在的项目结果可以在其他广泛的生物学和海洋物理学领域中使用，这些领域员工光学方法可以处理非常小的物体。