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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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https://ocean.gatech.edu/home
Summary Sentence: The Spring 2022 OSE Seminar Series -- Nolan Barrett, OSE Ph.D. Candidate
Full Summary: The seminar is offered both virtually and in person on the 3rd floor of ES&T in the new Ocean Room. However, the first two weeks are going be entirely virtual.
SP2022 ImageTo survive and thrive, organisms interact with their world through chemistry. This may occur on many different scales and for many distinct purposes; it is particularly important when other means of interacting with the world are not feasible. For some organisms, such as algae and bacteria, and in some environments, such as the ocean, it is an essential mechanism. Small molecules originating from both primary and secondary metabolism play many roles in predator-prey, host-parasite, and intraspecies interactions. The properties of the biosynthesized compounds govern the functions that these compounds perform. While some compounds were evolutionarily intended for one or several purposes in an ecosystem, they can be leveraged for use in other ways such as human therapeutics or bioremediation. Understanding how these compounds produce their effect, why they are produced at all, and how they exert control on organisms, will ultimately lead to advances in their creative applications. This dissertation proposes the examination of the ways in which small molecules drive biochemical, physiological, and ecological processes in four projects with links to both marine chemical ecology and drug discovery. For Project 1, I will probe the antibiotic mechanism of action of a marine natural product using a combined 1H NMR and LC-IM-MS metabolomics approach. In Project 2, I will uncover whether the element boron’s role in secondary metabolites, particularly of marine algae, is to provide conformational stabilization. With Project 3, I will investigate the ecological roles of an oil spill-associated bacterium and oil spills on the beach sand microbial communities of the Gulf of Mexico. Lastly, in Project 4, I will determine how nutrient regimes affect the chemical-signal detection, production, and uptake in a phytoplankton-bacteria interaction.
